Auto accidents in North Carolina and elsewhere in our union take the lives of 40,000 million a year, injure millions more, and lead to untold indirect costs for the victims, their family members, their coworkers and associates, and society as a whole.
But what if automobiles are even more deadly as instruments of pollution than they are as instruments of destruction?

This may sound far-fetched. After all, 40,000 deaths a year is an enormous amount. But it is at least possible, given some science and suggestive research, to build a case that the pollution exuded by cars, trucks, motorcycles, and other transportation vehicles causes or contributes to thousands of deaths in the U.S. every year – perhaps more.

Witness, for instance, pretty scary epidemiological evidence that shows that people who live within a mile or so of Los Angeles’ notoriously congested freeways (like the 405) are substantially at greater risk for diseases like heart disease, asthma, and other respiratory problems. Now, not every person who inhales the pollution from the 405 is going to get heart disease and die from it. But the quality of life certainly might be affected. That person might have less energy. That person might be less able to think effectively and deal with emergency situations. So if the pollution itself directly kills, say, a few hundred people in the Los Angeles area alone annually (making those numbers up), maybe the indirect effect of the pollution could wreak yet more havoc.

Imagine, for instance, a person who lives in an apartment that’s abutting the freeway – who inhales massive amounts of particulate matter and toxins every day – and thus suffers deterioration in cognitive capacity. It’s easy to imagine that that person would get hurt at work easier or more easily lose his balance and slipping and suffer a terrible slip and fall. If you extrapolate and really think about the indirect consequences of our exposure to pollution – particularly in major cities like Los Angeles and goodly sized cities like Raleigh – perhaps our safety experts should be focused not just on car accident prevention in North Carolina but also on car pollution prevention.

Whether or not you agree with this thesis, hopefully you are getting to appreciate the holistic nature of auto accident science. As a victim – or a family member of a victim – in a recent car crash, you probably have a very specific way you’ve been thinking about the accident. You “know” who might be to blame, what kind of compensation you deserve and so forth. But to get best results, you need to look at your problems from different angles and get advice from objective, qualified resources, like a North Carolina auto accident law firm.

More Web Resources:

Air Pollution in Los Angeles near the 405

How bad is our automobile pollution problem?

When we discuss North Carolina car accidents, we often oversimplify. For instance, you may learn about a driver who fell asleep behind the wheel and crashed into a school bus. You’d thus be likely leap to blame the driver’s lazyness or negligence for the catastrophe. This analysis might be correct. But we should not overlook simple, subtle, small things that can accumulate to create enhanced risk for accidents.

Consider, for instance, the fact that national holidays like the 4th of July, New Year’s Eve, and Super Bowl Sunday are more “dangerous” than normal days of the week. Why? The hypothesis is that more drivers, on average, drink and party on those days. Thus, there are more drunken drivers on the road. Thus, there are more drunk and driving related accidents.

Sounds simple enough, right?

But this idea hides a complex lesson. For instance, say in a typical town, you would have 20 DUI crashes on any given day; on a national holiday, you’d have 40 DUI crashes. But it’s not like only 20 people “got more drunk” than they normally would. The town’s population, as a whole, drank more than normal. So what you are seeing with these stats is a threshold effect! There probably were A LOT of people who drank a little more than they normally would. But the vast majority didn’t get into accidents because they did not reach the accident threshold – a combination of luck, genetics, etc.

We almost always pay attention to evidence above this threshold – seeing the DUI driver who caused an accident – but we don’t have a way of measuring the “dog that didn’t bite” – the DUI driver who got home safely.

Here is another way to think about this. Most people would never riot at a bar. But imagine if you’re at a bar, and your team wins. Suddenly people start getting rowdy and crazy and throwing chairs. You might “join the fun” and throw a glass or tip over a barstool or do something out of exuberance to be part of the crowd. You would never normally do that. But the social permission changes your behavior.

The moral is: we need to pay attention to small cumulative “things” that provoke us and misbehave on the road – driving under the influence of medication, for instance, or driving while fatigued, or driving long distances on roads that you are not used to driving on, etc. All these below the radar factors can influence your ability to drive safely.

If someone hurt you or someone you love in a car crash, an experienced car accident law firm in North Carolina can help you create a strategy to obtain justice and substantial compensation.

More Web Resources:

Small Causes Add Up To Big Effects

The Threshold Effect

Last August, a fatal North Carolina DUI accident took the life of 51-year-old motorcyclist, Larry Weaver on Highway 221. Weaver lost his life when Brian Robinson, 22, slammed into his bike with his GMC pickup and dragged Weaver over 300 feet. When South Carolina police officers arrived at the scene, they tested Robinson for alcohol. He confessed to having drunk some beers and two shots of vodka, as well as doing a hit of marijuana. A blood test found that he had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.52%, more than six times North Carolina’s state limits.

In addition to the 15-year jail sentence, Robinson must serve 12 years before becoming eligible for parole. Robinson had been convicted of drug violations several times prior to the fatal North Carolina DUI accident.

Our hearts go out to Weaver’s family, as well as to Robinson’s family. Horrific car accidents like these are difficult to put into context. What do they mean? What can we learn from them? Who should be punished, and how? These are questions that we can and should discuss and debate. But we also need to take time to reflect on the fundamental scariness of what it means to be a North Carolina driver. Every time you take your car out on to the road and you return home safely, count your blessings. It can be a dangerous world out there, and you never know when danger is going to strike.

Of course, picking up the pieces after a car accident is often extremely painful. You are disoriented, confused, frustrated, angry, and a rainbow of other emotions. You may have a hard time figuring out where to start to rebuild your life and hold people responsible, if you have the energy and will power to start at all.

It’s not necessary to struggle or figure out everything on your own. With the guidance of a passionate, thorough, and experienced North Carolina car accident law firm, you can make surprisingly rapid progress. Although you may be in a very difficult place right now, you can make progress toward recovering your dignity and composure, obtaining compensation, holding the right people accountable, and generally putting the pieces of your life back together again.

More Web Resources:

Fatal North Carolina DUI Accident Nets Man 15-year Jail Sentence

The Highest BAC Reading of All Time?

After a North Carolina auto accident – even a minor one, such as a fender bender at a red light or a scrape on the freeway – you enter a kind of primitive physiological state. Your body knows that it’s under threat, and stress reactions kick in. Your adrenaline may jack up. Your blood pressure may rise. You may experience extreme anger as well as focus. If you’re injured, your body may go into shock. A lot of things happen, both psychologically and physically, in other words – even if the accident is minor.

When you get out of your vehicle and talk to the driver or motorcyclist or trucker who hit you, you’re still operating, physiologically, from this primitive state. It’s normal, in such a situation, to feel extreme animosity and anger because you’ve had your need for safety fundamentally threatened. So, you may end up saying or even doing things that you would never do in “real life.” You might curse at an old lady or threaten to punch a scared teenager. You might make accusations that have no bearing or, conversely, apologizing for something that you didn’t even do. Some of these communication mistakes are unfortunate but inconsequential. If you call an old lady an SOB, you might regret it later, but it might not hurt your potential to obtain compensation in North Carolina auto accident case. But if you engage in other behaviors – such as admitting fault as a “gut reaction” when you weren’t indeed in fact at fault, that admission can come back to haunt your case.

To protect yourself from ever having to be in this position, you need to practice how to communicate with people while you’re under stress. Techniques abound to help people become better listeners and more calm and cool in dangerous circumstances. One philosophy of communication you may wish to explore is Dr. Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication philosophy. Rosenberg teaches his students to listen for the “feelings and needs” behind aggressive and angry external statements. For instance, the driver who cursed at you may not be angry because at “you;” rather, he is angry because his need for safety was not met. It’s a subtle distinction, but it’s an important one, since it liberates you from responsibility for other people’s feelings. Likewise, when you get in contact with your own feelings and needs, you are less likely to “take things personally” and more likely to be resourceful, compassionate, and even empathetic in situations where you are under stress.

Learning NVC communication is by no means easy or simple or intuitive. But Rosenberg’s students have compiled many anecdotes in which NVC training helped them to deal with extremely such stressful situations – being robbed, being threatened in public, etc. By connecting with yourself and with others at moments of anger, you can defuse situations that could otherwise turn ugly and also protect and preserve your chances for maximizing justice and obtaining the best possible recovery and resolution.

More Web Resources;

What Happens to the Brain During Periods of Extreme Stress

Nonviolent Communication Website

Tragic North Carolina car accidents often attract the attention of police, investigators, and sometimes the news media and general public.

But “near-miss” accidents attract the attention of practically no one at all – save for the drivers whose hearts skipped a few beats as they contemplated what could have just happened.

Chances are, you’ve been involved in a few “near-miss” situations yourself. There is a lot that you can learn from these situations – information that could be useful for helping you and other drivers avoid injury accidents and improve driving skills.

Accidents Are Aberrations

Odds are that drivers experience far more “near misses” than they do actual accidents. Since we don’t pay attention to these near misses, they are less salient, and we may tend to discount their relevance. In fact, it’s not uncommon for drivers who’ve just “nearly missed” getting into serious collisions to forget about what happened by the time they arrive home or at their destination.

But these near misses may hold powerful clues about your driving behavior, attitudes, and weaknesses. By attending to them – identifying what happened, who was involved, how you went wrong (or right), etc. – you can shore up your most glaring weaknesses and inculcate new, better, and safer behaviors.

How to Do It

The key is to collect data.

Every time you’re involved in a “near-miss” accident — after you stop driving and are in a safe place — write down exactly what happened in as much detail as possible. Identify more information than you think is necessary – dates, who was involved, how you felt before and afterwards, what you think caused it, etc.

Likewise, journal any time after anything extraordinary happens on the road. As a general point, the more information you have about your driving – and the more specific that information is – the more good data you can mune to understand your driving habits.

Why do this? Isn’t it time consuming and annoying?

Perhaps. But car accidents are one of the biggest non-disease killers of North Carolinians. So it’s worth your time to pay attention to and prevent auto disasters.

For help understanding actionable, specific tactics and strategies you can use to hold someone accountable for what happened to you, connect with a North Carolina auto accident law firm right now.

More Web Resources:

“Near-miss” accidents

Using journaling to understand and change your behaviors