You were recently involved in a scary and surprising North Carolina car accident. In the wake of that disaster, however, you’ve had some confusing thoughts about what exactly happened prior to and after the collision. You are pretty sure that the other driver veered into your lane and caused you to weave off to the side of the road. But you are not 100% positive. Or maybe you are certain that the other driver blew through a stop sign and hit the tail of your car – then again, was there a stop sign at that intersection that you missed?

It’s not uncommon for victims of North Carolina car accidents to question their version of events, even if witnesses and others can confirm them. The human memory is notoriously complicated and doesn’t always come up with precise objective renditions of past events. Our emotions color our memories. The stories that we hear – that we tell ourselves after the fact — can also influence memory. And particularly if the accident was somewhat complicated – in which may be you and the other driver were both partially at fault – your mind can extrapolate the worst (or, conversely, entertain overly rosy ideas about how much you were to blame).

Is your mind playing tricks on you? What was the reality of your accident?

To understand complex events, like car accidents, we need hard data, good investigatory techniques, and keen understanding of North Carolina car accident law. One of the first steps is to get good, complete data and evidence as soon as possible after the crash. For instance, if you take a picture of the car accident scene – ideally many pictures – then you will have some kind of objective record to look at. If you interview witnesses and get them to write down their testimony right after the accident, then you have more reliable information. Police reports, medical documents, photographs, even a damaged car itself can all be used to corroborate a version of events or to challenge it.

What you do with that information is also mission critical. If you wait too long to connect with a resource, like Michael DeMayo’s North Carolina car accident law firm, then the information that you collect may lose its relevance, get lost, etc. You may also say or do things that create trouble for your case. For instance, you may make relatively innocuous comments to the other driver’s insurance adjuster – e.g. “I’m feeling a little better now” – that imperil your ability to collect damages months or even years down the line.

To guard against insecurity and poor memory, act with due urgency to collect relevant information and find a good law firm, like DeMayo Law, that you can trust to guide you the rest of the way.

More Web Resources:

The Notorious Value of Remembered Testimony

The tricks our minds can play on us in terms of memory

Maybe your son has already been involved in a scary and perhaps serious North Carolina motorcycle crash.

Or maybe you are just concerned that his driving habits and attitudes and friends have put him on a collision course with disaster. What can you do to influence his behavior, and get him to change his ways to become more safety conscious?

This problem is minimally discussed, if ever discussed, on North Carolina car accident blogs and other educational websites. Instead, we get the same old pabulum — preaching safety advice to the choir. Do you really need to be told, again and again, why it’s so important to wear a helmet while driving or why to avoid biking under the influence of drugs, alcohol, or extreme fatigue? Probably not. You are the one who always reads safety articles, forwards emails to your son, etc!

Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to solve this “preaching to the choir” problem. How do you reach out to people who seem to make an art out of ignoring your advice?

The answer is not necessarily intuitive. In fact, probably you worry that if you get overly alarmist about motorcycle safety, then you will alienate your son (or other relative) who is at risk of a North Carolina car or motorcycle crash. And you might well be right.

On the other hand, you can’t stand idly by and allow the dangerous driving behavior to continue. If you are still reeling from an actual motorcycle accident, you know in a very real and palpable way what can go wrong – or at least what has the potential to go wrong.

What you need is not necessarily better information – more alarmism, more statistics showing why you are right and he is wrong, etc. You need a new approach — a way to try to connect on a personal, empathetic level.

No one likes to be preached to or talked down to, even if they would begrudgingly acknowledge that certain messages are ultimately in their best interest to hear.

So instead of preaching, consider trying to connect with the rider by using empathy and listening. Find out what’s really going on with him. One very interesting and innovative set of tools is the so-called “nonviolent communication” paradigm, developed by renowned psychologist and negotiator, Marshall Rosenberg.

Rosenberg has created a very interesting and a useful set of communication strategies that help people connect empathetically with one and another and get their needs met. Rosenberg focuses on the feelings and needs of various parties in negotiations.

You can find out more by checking out the link below. And if you need help with a specific motorcycle accident case, connect with a North Carolina motorcycle accident law firm.

More web resources:

Marshall Rosenberg’s nonviolent communication

Why it’s so hard to communicate criticism

What can we do to make North Carolina car crashes “go away,” so that our roads will be essentially 100% safe?

How can we make drivers treat each other humanely, even under difficult conditions, inclement weather, etc?

Before you get lost in pondering these questions, stop. The questions are fundamentally absurd. The idea that we could ever hope to achieve a 100% safety rate in any endeavor in our life is comically absurd. Life is inherently a risky affair. Indeed, stop and contemplate the odds that you were even lucky enough to be born – they were astronomically stacked against you. All along the path of life, we constantly face risks. Even just sitting and lying on your bed too long can lead to bedsores, which can lead to sepsis (infection) and death. What’s more, out attempts to cocoon ourselves against the specter of risk can backfire in unexpected ways. The over-use of antibiotics, for instance, can prevent you from building up an effective immune system and thus, ironically, render you more predisposed to catching colds.

Many researchers now believe that our fear of dietary saturated fat (the idea that eating fat leads to heart disease) led us down the path of consuming way too many unhealthy simple carbohydrates and sugars… thus accidentally making us sicker and fatter.

The problem when we talk about issues like auto safety or diets or sun exposure or any other factor in life where you can “overcompensate” in both directions (getting “too much” of something or getting “too little” of it) is that you can easily become ideological. If you say that, for instance, no car accident prevention scheme will be 100% effective, some people might take that conclusion too far. They’ll then say “okay, life is risky. So why bother trying to make cars safer in the first place, then?”

That’s missing the point!

The point is that questions like “how can we make North Carolina cars and roads safer?” are fundamentally complex. They are not easily distilled down to a sound bite or a one word answer.

And until we develop the language — and a culture of thinking — that respects this kind of complexity, we are always going to be oversimplifying our problems and oversimplifying the solutions to those problems to the detriment of the intention of our quests.

More Web Resources:

Are we getting too much sunlight…or too little?

Are we eating too much fat…or too little?

On Saturday March 31st, a tragic North Carolina car crash on Interstate 77 took the life of 16-year-old Thomas Luciano, a student at South Mecklenburg High School. According to local reports from WCNC, Luciano was thrown out of an SUV during the crash – he had not been wearing a safety belt. The other passengers and the driver survived, although another passenger, Roland Calhoun, had to undergo surgery for an injury he sustained in the crash. Luciano’s friends painted a big rock outside their high school with messages remembering and celebrating him.

Tragedies like this car crash occur far too often in North Carolina and elsewhere. What can we learn from situations like this? Since the police investigation of the accident has not yet concluded, we can’t really say much about the cause of the crash. If it’s true that Luciano was not been wearing his safety belt, most accident investigators would probably say that omission was significant. But accidents are peculiar and eccentric events. Yes, the statistics definitely show that people who wear safety belts are more likely to survive car crashes and avoid injuries.

But when we jump too quickly to conclusions, we can shortchange ourselves and any friends or family members hurt in a crash. For instance, maybe you, too, recently got hurt in a North Carolina car crash in which you had not be wearing a seatbelt or in which “you drove too fast.” Or something. In other words, you believe that you were at fault in some fashion. You could just accept this diagnosis and try to move on with your life. But a detailed analysis may show that some other factor was also involved – perhaps, crucially so. For instance, maybe your car’s brakes malfunctioned. Maybe the road itself had a design flaw that caused your car to spin out on a curve.

The takeaway is that you may find it extremely useful to get an objective, clearheaded, experienced perspective on what happened. A North Carolina car crash law firm, for instance, can help you protect your rights and preserve potential opportunities to collect compensation from a reckless driver, careless mechanic, or other party.

More Web Resources:

“Classmates Mourn Teen Killed in Crash” WCNC.com Charlotte.

South Mecklenburg High School

Truck accidents in North Carolina have society wide consequences.

If a big rig flips over on 95 Northbound, for instance, the crash could cause fatalities and injuries and choke off traffic for hours. Truck accidents put pressure on insurance companies, devastate lives, and lead to regulations that have the potential to disrupt commerce. In other words, it’s in everyone’s interest to reduce these accidents and minimize the property damage and injuries caused by them. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all contribute to this safety effort?

Is crowdsourcing the answer to the North Carolina truck accident prevention dilemma?

“Crowdsourcing” refers to using large groups of people to solve complex problems. People use crowdsourcing to unravel mathematical mysteries, beat complicated video games, play grandmaster level chess, and even solve political and economic problems.

Crowdsourcing, when correctly positioned and deployed, can be such an effective tool. So why don’t we use this concept to beef up our truck accident prevention measures?

A Recipe for Success

To effectively deploy any kind of accident prevention solution – crowdsourced or otherwise – we need to start by thinking about the purpose. WHY might we want to reduce truck accidents and/or limit the damage that these accidents cause? The likely answer is that these accidents exact an unacceptable toll on us – they disrupt and destroy the lives of our fellow citizens.

The next step is to identify the underlying principles that should govern the crowdsourcing venture. For instance, we may have cost constraints or time constraints that we want to focus on. Or we may want to start with a small accident-prevention crowdsourcing project first. Or we may want to do some research to find out “what works” on a practical level before applying it broadly.

Once we’ve figured out the purpose and principles of the project, we can begin to think about “best case scenario” outcomes for it. If the crowdsourcing accident prevention really succeeded, what would that look like? What systems, structures, and processes would be in place? By how much would we be able to reduce truck accidents? How much money would be saved?

Once we have our vision mapped out, we can begin to solidify plans and an appropriate organizational structure and actions required to bring it to fruition.

For powerful insights and strategy to help you succeed with your case, connect with an auto accident law firm in North Carolina.

More Web Resources:

Crowdsourcing 101

Examples of How Crowdsourcing Can Work To Solve Problems

Police officers are supposed to pick up the pieces after North Carolina car accidents…not cause them!

But a bizarre story reported in South Carolina (News Channel 7) has many questioning the driving prowess of a veteran officer. According to the South Carolina Highway Patrol, 25-year old John Leopard was responding to a call about a fight in progress, when his patrol car veered off the road and smashed into a house on North Street. The accident happened around 9 p.m. Fortunately, nobody was home, so no one was hurt, save Leopard, who suffered minor scratches and bruising. The Highway Patrol is investigating the accident. But for now, Officer Leopard remains on the job…although he cannot drive a city vehicle until the investigators finish their work.

The story raises more questions than answers:

•    Was the officer distracted behind the wheel (e.g. on the phone, on a CB radio, etc); and, if so, did the distraction cause him to veer off the road?
•    Was his 2008 Crown Victoria somehow damaged or mechanically unsound?
•    Had other cars made similar “mistakes” on North Street before? If so, maybe there is a flaw in the road signage or engineering – a line of sight problem, perhaps?
•    Does Officer Leopard have a history of accidents or other driving issues?

Examining the totality of evidence is always crucial. News reports often provide just the bare essence of what happened in an accident. Even if the news reports are written as objectively as possible, they may include a slant or bias, just due to the nature of the storytelling and the phrases picked at random by the writer.

To really determine the truth of an accident – to find out why it occurred, who was really responsible, and who should be liable for paying for costs like damage to property, medical costs, lost work time, etc. – you need to conduct an intense, thorough analysis. Your instincts about what happened might be right…or they might be way off. To get the clarity you need to build the best possible case, connect with a North Carolina auto accident law firm.

More Web Resources:

Police officer who crashed car into a home still on the job

Why do cars crash into buildings?

A fatal North Carolina truck accident brought traffic screeching to a halt last Monday on Interstate 85 near the Sam Wilson Road exit. But it also brought radical changes to the lives of the family members of Larry James Grier, 59. According to the North Carolina Highway Patrol report, Grier died after his Budget rental truck ran into a broken down tractor-trailer at a truck weigh station near exit 29.

Local news reports about the story were relatively brief. This was not a North Carolina truck accident involving a lot of fireworks or controversy. There was no one apparently DUI. There was no one driving under the influence of drugs. It was not a multi-car wreck, nor was it tied to any broader cultural or socio-economic issue that might provoke public debate.

But it’s important to reflect on the tragedy of this accident: it is horrific news in and of itself, but it’s also sad that stories like these often fall under people’s radar. Imagine if your loved one got injured in a collision like this. A simple passing mention in a news stories seems like paltry tribute to your loss and pain.

Part of the problem is we are living in an attention-deficit society, so we essentially have grown numb to “pedestrian” North Carolina car accidents and other tragedies. And this is sad. It is sad because it demonstrates that we may miss out on critical reminders of how precious life is and opportunities to connect with people in pain and help them through it.

If you’ve recently been a victim in a truck or car accident on North Carolina roads, you probably feel resentful or even angry because the world around you doesn’t seem to “care enough.” Sure, you may receive sympathy and condolence cards. You may get other kinds of help, including compensation, support from friends and family members, medical attention, etc. But we often fail to get the empathy that we really need in times of great crisis.

Recognize that you need to be listened to. If people who are close to you are unable to listen, seek out someone who will listen. It’s not that we necessarily want solutions to our problems—rather, we want people to understand our pain on a human level.

More Web Resources:

Fatal North Carolina Truck Accident Kills 59-Year-Old Rental Truck Driver

What We Really Need Is Empathy

A recent car accident in North Carolina has turned your world upside down – possibly literally.

Perhaps a careless guy in a Ford truck rear-ended you at a red light, or you got banged up when a delivery truck veered into your lane on the freeway without notice. You’ve been feeling quite uncomfortable and “tight” in the days and weeks following the crash. You might have already been diagnosed with whiplash or some other musculoskeletal disorder.

The battle to get compensated appropriately for your car accident in North Carolina may be a long slog. You can speed up the process of obtaining a better result (and seeing justice done) by connecting with an established North Carolina car accident law firm. Other measures can help, too, like seeing a physician promptly, collecting information from the scene of the crash, and keeping robust notes of your conversations with witnesses, insurance company representatives, etc.

All that’s important. However, you are probably very concerned with the whiplash or other muscular pain. What’s causing it? What can be done to fix it?

Obviously, you should not try to self diagnose – you need a physician’s opinion. However, there is a really interesting, if controversial, theory that you might want to read about during your research. Dr. John Sarno, best-selling author of books like The Mind Body Solution and Healing Back Pain, posits that very real pain conditions like whiplash, repetitive strain disorder, carpal tunnel syndrome, and lower back pain, may be perpetuated by psychological factors as opposed to physiological factors.

Sarno’s basic thesis is that, in Western Society, it is often unacceptable to express emotions such as anger and exasperation. And so, instead of yelling or beating people up, we “swallow” the rage and frustration. It becomes internalized and physicalized as problems like a tight back or whiplash-like syndromes. This isn’t to say that the pain is “all in your head.” To the contrary, there seem to be pretty well established physiological mechanisms why the pain occurs – due to oxygen deprivation and other problems caused by so-called muscular trigger points. Typical treatments for problems like whiplash focus on eliminating or reducing these trigger points through massage, acupuncture, stretching, strengthening, etc. But Sarno contends that the perpetuating factor is psychological. Once you accept his diagnosis – all it takes, in Sarno’s perspective is education about the “real” problem, which he calls TMS – the brain stops suppressing the negative emotions and automatically releases the trigger points and helps you feel better.

Sarno’s theory sounds absolutely bizarre to the most people, when they hear it for the first time. He and his followers do point out some intriguing studies and hard evidence that seems to suggest they might be on to something. For instance, Sarno points out that an “epidemic” of whiplash took hold of Norway, once physicians in that country began to diagnose the condition. When researchers looked at a control group in Lithuania — people who had been involved in serious car accidents that should have given them “whiplash” — they found that the Lithuanians’ rate of whiplash was essentially zero. So, perhaps, the diagnosis of whiplash gave these people whiplash. It’s very interesting and counterintuitive. But certainly something that you might want to explore, as you do your research.

More Web Resources

The Gist of John Sarno’s Theory

The Norway/Lithuania Whiplash Study

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

What do you think happened during your North Carolina car accident? And what’s the difference between your interpretation of what occurred versus what actually happened?

Assuming that there is a difference – that there were aspects of the accident you didn’t understand and don’t currently understand – how do you fill that gap to maximize your potential case’s value, ensure justice is done, and speed up the resolution of your matter?

Interesting questions, aren’t they!

The “Voltage” Problem

It’s important to remember that in almost all accident cases, there is a gap between the perception of the North Carolina car accident and the objective “reality” of that accident, assuming that you could measure and codify everything that happened or went wrong.

For instance, let’s take a very commonplace problem. You stop at a red light. A driver coasts in behind you and bangs your bumper, giving you a mild case of whiplash. The cause (to you) is cut and dry. The driver behind you just wasn’t paying attention. Maybe he or she was chatting on a cell phone or something. But the cause and effect is pretty clear.

And, indeed, it might be. But maybe the person who bumped you tried at the last minute to hit the brakes, but the brakes did not respond effectively. In that case, the accident would have a kind of “hidden cause” that contributed to the damage. Had the person’s brakes functioned at their optimum, then the accident might not have occurred.

That’s a very simple case, but you might be surprised by the diversity and prevalence of “hidden causes.”

In more complicated accidents, the “real objective truth” of the accident may be even harder to discern. For instance: say a trucker hit you on Interstate 95. Consider the unknowns. How well was that trucker trained? Did the trucking company institute appropriate policies for vetting their potential employees? Did the trucker have any history of drug or alcohol use? You have no way of knowing the answers simply from reading the facts of the accident in a police report.

The Danger of Making Too Many Assumptions

If you assume too much about your accident, you run the risk of pursuing the wrong leads, settling for far too little, and allowing potentially liable parties to escape judgment. This much is obvious. But you might be surprised at how often the plaintiff’s insistence (“I know who did it and why!”) impedes progresses in cases.

How to Get All the Facts

To make the most appropriate decisions, you may find it worth your while to talk to a competent and highly experienced North Carolina car accident law firm. A good firm will use powerful investigative techniques, talk to witnesses, and probe under the surface to make sure that you get as close to the “objective truth” about your crash as modern science and forensics will allow.

More Web Resources:

How our perceptions warp our ability to maneuver properly

Hidden causes of accidents