Your children are your lifeblood. You’ve bent over backward to nurse them, educate them, and protect them from the scary and dangerous aspects of the world. You would like even more help on the “preventing North Carolina car accidents” front.

Below, we’ve compiled some battle tips to help you and your family engage in practices that protect your precious little ones from North Carolina car, truck, motorcycle accidents.

• Rear-facing Car Seats

Most parents know that children under the age of two should be placed in rear-facing car seats. But what happens after age two? Does it make a difference whether the car seat is rear-facing or front-facing? The current scientific consensus suggests: if possible, keep your child facing rear, even after age two. Indeed, some safety experts believe that almost all passengers – including adults! – would be safer facing rear. Obviously, this does not include drivers.

• Limit Driving

How far away is your day care or school? Is it 10 minutes away, 20 minutes away, further? The more miles you drive with your children, the greater the chance that you will get into an accident. It’s simple statistics. Obviously, you don’t want to make yourself nuts. We live in a practical world, and you need to make some tradeoffs. If you don’t drive anywhere with your child, how will he or she attend school, go to practices, etc.? But if you spend some time analyzing what you can do to spend fewer hours behind the wheel with your child, you’re going to benefit. Even if you only shave off 2,400 miles a year – roughly 50 miles a week – that’s 2,400 miles fewer per year that you are at risk for injuries and accidents.

• Minimize “Behind the Wheel” Distractions

Most conscientious parents know not to talk or text on the cell phone with or without a child in the car. But children themselves are self-perpetuating distractions. You can’t help that. But you can do things like keep idle chatter to a minimum, hammer home the message that when you are behind the wheel you need to concentrate, and prohibit children from watching movies or playing noisy video games unless they wear earphones (so you don’t get distracted by the stories or sounds). Don’t be afraid to be strict here – distracted driving is a real and tangible killer.

• Teach Your Children Good Safety Habits from an Early Age.

Again, this probably goes without saying. But you’d be surprised at how many parents don’t actually train their kids effectively for walking in parking lots (always hold mommy’s hand!), crossing the street (always look both ways before crossing!), and so on.

• Avoid Driving When You are Fatigued, Angry, Overwhelmed, on Medications, etc.

Only drive if and when you feel you are in shape to do so – even if that means cancelling a play date, skipping a practice, or keeping your child home from school. Don’t be foolish, and don’t take unnecessary risks.

For help with specific questions regarding an incident or accident, connect with a powerful, competent North Carolina car accident law firm.

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More information on the front-facing versus rear-facing car seat dilemma

Safe driving tips for parents

Last Saturday, after Hurricane Irene blew through Goldsborough and took out several traffic lights, a teen died in a horrific North Carolina car crash. According to Police Captain Chad Calloway, “The wreck likely would not have happened if the traffic signals were working.” The young girl died around 4 PM. Her death was the second that North Carolina officials pinned directly on Hurricane Irene. On early Saturday, a tree limb fell on a man in Nash County and killed him. A Washington Post article several days later said that all together six North Carolinians died during Hurricane Irene’s assault. Among those killed:

• Katherine Cruz, the 15-year-old who died in the traffic light accident;
• Sixty-year-old Ricky Webb, the man killed by the tree limb;
• Fifty-year-old Tim Avery, who was killed when a tree fell on to his home;
• Jose Corona, who died in a separate traffic accident;
• Sabrina Jones, who died when a tree fell on her car;
• Melton Robinson, Jr., who was found in the Cape Fear River.

Tragic North Carolina car accidents occur even during normal, sunny weather. Victims and their family members are often left shell-shocked and flatfooted by the sudden and terrible news.

Unfortunately, the longer a victim (or family member of a victim) waits to take action, the more difficult it might be to achieve a good outcome in the legal system, including just compensation. Evidence from a crash – especially a crash that occurs during stormy weather – can be washed away or cleared off the road by maintenance crews. To that end, you should consider speaking with an attorney at an experienced North Carolina car accident law firm to go over what you should (and should not) do to protect your rights, ensure justice, and return your family to a sense of normalcy and stability.

More Web Resources:

Katherine Cruz accident

Irene and North Carolina

Whether a racing teenager knocked your bike off the road and gave you a head injury and serious lacerations and road rash; or a careless pedestrian wandered in front of your bike, causing you to veer off into oncoming traffic and get seriously hurt, you want a smart way to figure out how to pick up the pieces from your North Carolina motorcycle accident.

Unfortunately, many victims make profound mistakes in the minutes, hours, days, and weeks following their crashes which prevent them from collecting due compensation, healing properly, and returning their lives to normal. Here are a few:

1. Failing to collect information from the scene of accident

Obviously, in the wake of your North Carolina motorcycle accident, you should immediately seek medical attention – as well as help other injured victims get attention as well. But in terms of your case, you should also be mindful of collecting info that you can use later to build a potential lawsuit – info such as the names, numbers, and contact information of all drivers involved; witness reports; photographs of the accident and property damage and injuries; police reports; or any other relevant information. Failure to collect info quickly can result in its degradation – or, in the case of witness statements, it being forgotten or misremembered later on.

2. Taking too long to find good help

A North Carolina motorcycle accident law firm can help you strategize immediately about who might be liable, how potentially to hold that person or company or insurance company to account, and how to deal with other problems or potential opportunities that arise along the way. Again, the longer you wait to acquire representation, the greater the possibility that critical information will get lost, misremembered, or otherwise warped and degraded.

3. Undercutting your case by saying things you shouldn’t

If you make an admission of guilt in a crash – saying things like “I am sorry; I should have signaled” or something along those lines — you can potentially wind up as a target in a case where you’re really the victim. Likewise, if you admit certain facts to the other driver’s insurance company’s representatives, for instance, you can waylay your chances for an optimal settlement or trial verdict. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t tell the truth – but be sure to talk to an attorney before you start discussing your case widely, so you don’t potentially impede your chances of an optimal settlement or verdict in your favor.

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Better decision making

parkinson’s law

If you have been recently a victim in a North Carolina car accident, and you suffered an injury such as whiplash, broken bones, lacerations, head injuries, or worse, you and your family likely want to hold the negligent or careless party accountable to the law and potentially bring a lawsuit against him, her, or a company or an insurer. The money that you win in a North Carolina car accident settlement or verdict can prove crucial to pay for things like your surgical bills, rehabilitation, medical care, lost wages, therapy, job training, legal fees, and much more.

But many defendants make the mistake of thinking that their version of the accident is “right” and that all their North Carolina car accident law firm must do is “prove” their position. In fact, your law firm will deeply investigate the cause of the accident and potentially uncover evidence that you simply were not aware of. This evidence could highlight other responsible parties — a huge boon for plaintiffs, especially if the person who hit you lacked insurance to pay for your extensive damages and medical bills.

Here are two examples to illustrate the point:

1. A trucker high on methamphetamine drives too fast and knocks your car off I-95 into a ditch.

You suffer sprains, broken bones, and a contusion. After you recover, you want to sue the truck driver. The negligent methamphetamine addled driver likely should be liable. But a hidden defendant might be the trucker’s company – maybe the company failed to do an adequate background check before they hired the driver? In this case, not only might the driver be liable but the company who hired him might also be liable for your cost.

2. You’re driving in a rural area near Ashton when a teenager yapping on a cell phone rear-ends you and gives you a massive case of whiplash, which forces you to undergo months and months of soft tissue therapy, physical therapy, and possibly even surgery.

The teenage driver might be liable, of course, but a hidden defendant might be the manufacturer of the brakes in the teen’s car. In other words, perhaps the teenager actually tried to slam on her brakes, but the car did not respond effectively; and ultimately the reason for this failure had to do with an engineering flaw in her car’s braking system. This fact may not exonerate her from having to pay for your medical bills, etc, but it might rope in another party – the manufacturer/designer of the braking system – and pave the way for you to recover significant damages.

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Hidden complexity

looking deeper into problems

North Carolina car, truck, motorcycle accident specialists often presume that motorists know how to comport themselves safely on the roads but simply “choose not to” for a variety of reasons.

For instance:

• A driver may consume drugs or alcohol before getting behind the wheel;
• Or a motorcycle rider may choose not to wear a helmet and thus increase her risk of serious head injury in a fall.
• Or a truck driver may pop speed pills or drink massive amounts of Mountain Dew to clock in extra hours on a long run.

And so the standard recommendation for increasing safety involves changing driver behavior. And there is definitely is something to this. Obviously, if drivers engaged more courteously with one another, employed best practices for safety (such as wearing helmets and seat belts) and paid more attention to keeping their vehicles shipshape, we definitely would see fewer accidents – and fewer injuries, fatalities, and resultant North Carolina motorcycle accident lawsuits.

On the other hand, it’s probably very simplistic to take this “blame the driver” mentality as far as we collectively have.

The social pressures that human beings feel are profound and difficult to fight against. Who hasn’t gotten mad and felt a little bit of “road rage” in the middle of a gridlock? Who hasn’t engaged, at least a few times, in a careless, frivolous, or just downright stupid activity behind the wheel or as a pedestrian?

As much as we like to think of ourselves as rugged individuals, we are highly attuned and responsive to social cues. When people drive fast, we feel compelled to “keep up with them.” When everyone else in the car doesn’t wear a seatbelt, we feel foolish for wearing ours. You can find countless examples of this kind of social influence in our driving behavior.

So why, then, do we focus essentially exclusively on changing the behavior of individuals? Why don’t we focus more on changing out collective behavior?

The typical counterargument is… we do. We post signs everywhere. We provide driver education. We publicize the results of accidents and engage in endless debates about punishments, regulations, and road engineering.

But perhaps what’s missing is a more systematic probing of the social influences on drivers. Better campaigns might focus, for instance, on making driving fast “less cool” among teenagers.

Sounds impossible? Perhaps. But what if every North Carolina high schooler was required, twice a semester, to watch scary filmstrips about the dangers of driving too fast? Would the repetition of the message create the conditions to change the culture among teenage drivers? Perhaps. But until we start to think about our safety engineering in terms of changing the consciousness of social structures instead of changing the consciousness of individual drivers, we are going to be stuck metaphorically spinning the wheels on the safety question.

Questions about your recent car, truck, motorcycle accident? Connect with a North Carolina motorcycle accident law firm today.

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Power of Social Pressures

Whether a truck dinged you in a Winn-Dixie parking lot or your motorcycle got essentially demolished when a teen gabbing on her cell phone blew through a red light and hit you, your North Carolina car accident has thrown your life into a kind of chaos. What can you do to “dig out” from the destruction and regain a semblance of control, security, and relaxation again?

In terms of dealing with the legal loose ends, a North Carolina car accident law firm can provide systematic guidance, strategic knowledge, and compassionate advice, so that you can, for instance, collect compensation for medical costs that you suffered, property damage to your vehicle, your work wages lost, and much more.

Your insurance company can also (hopefully) give you tools, resources, and, potentially, money to manage the fallout of the accident.

But even with these good support structures in place, you may still face chaos and confusion in your life. You might feel angry about the accident, depressed, overwhelmed by the logistical crisis this has stimulated, and just generally “thrown off your game.”

One good tactic to start to regain some control is to simply get out of every concerning thought you have out of your head and down onto paper or onto a computer document. This way, you don’t have to try to brainstorm solutions in your head. You can literally see what’s bothering you and then make an action plan to resolve the biggest concerns.

Give yourself permission to write down as much as you want — even about vaguely tangential thoughts that may or may not be related to the accident. For instance, your list might look something like this:

• Frustrated that the car is going to be in the shop for two weeks
• Angry that my sister didn’t pick me up after the accident
• How am I going to go to school now?
• My necks sort of hurts. Do I have whiplash?
• Should I go to the doctor? Will insurance pay for it? Or will the other driver pay for it?
• This isn’t fair. Why do these things always happen to me?
• I have to remember next time I go on Waylay Avenue to watch out for drivers like the one who hit me. People are always speeding over there.

Once you have these and other thoughts down on paper, you can start to come up with solutions. For instance, after reviewing your list, you may decide that you need to have a talk with your sister about her actions after the accident; or you may brainstorm an alternative route around Waylay Avenue so that you don’t drive on a road that makes you feel uncomfortable.

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Getting thoughts out of your head and on paper

Relaxed Control with GTD

When you read about North Carolina car, truck, and bus accidents on the web (or check at the local news), you may think that you’re participating in a relatively harmless, if voyeuristic, activity. But research suggests that the news itself can have a profound impact on the rates and kinds of accidents that occur.

This may seem like a paradoxical, somewhat crazy, statement. But research in a variety of fields backs it up. Reports about teen suicides, for instance, may increase the number of (similar) teen suicides in their wake. Similarly, if a blog or news report discusses a North Carolina car accident – such as an elderly driver running a red light and getting hurt – this may indirectly (and inadvertently!) causes a spike in very similar kinds of accidents.

What’s going on here?

Theories abound. One interesting idea is that news reports make certain kinds of disasters more salient in people’s minds. This additional salience may be enough to “tip” people into committing accidents. For instance, in the teen suicide example… perhaps there is always a population of teens who are on the verge of harming themselves. If a teenager sees a news report about a person very much like himself or herself committing suicide, he or she may get an indirect psychological suggestion that says this kind of behavior is “okay” – and that signal may be just enough to give the teen “social permission” to commit suicide… as awful as that sounds.

Likewise, if you’re a 65-year old woman, and you read about a 60 something year old woman who gets into a car accident, you may be psychologically “persuaded” to take more risk.

It sounds completely counterintuitive. After all, you’d think that reading such a report would make you MORE vigilant against that kind of trouble. And perhaps it does that too… for some people. But human beings are, first and foremost, social creatures. And the ways and means by which cultural influences change our behavior are many and mysterious.

Again, these concepts are both somewhat controversial and speculative. But in our hussle and bussle to clamp down on accident rates and protect drivers and pedestrians, we need to look at indirect factors, such as this kind of “social permission giving,” to devise effective policy.

If you or someone close to you has been hurt in a motor vehicle accident, a North Carolina auto accident law firm can work with you to strategize how to get compensated for your medical bills, lost wages, rehab and time off of work.

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Suicide and the media

Copycat suicide

According to WECT, this past week, the North Carolina Highway Patrol has been traveling around to high schools throughout Columbus County in a bid to tamp down on the number of North Carolina auto accidents through its “VIP for a VIP” program.

Dismayed by statistics that suggest that over 276 teens have died in just four years, highway patrol officers want students to appreciate on a visceral level the dangers of driving while distracted. As prom season approaches, troopers, families, and school administrators alike worry about potential drug and alcohol abuse.

Students will be asked to sign something called a “zero tolerance contract” for drugs and alcohol. The VIP for a VIP program (stands for “vehicle injury prevention for a very important person”) includes a disturbing life-like reenactment of a fatal auto accident — students have to watch this. So first they listen to facts and figures about the dangers of inattentive, DUI, and careless driving; then they see the brutal consequences of ignoring safety measures.

The big question is: Will the VIP for a VIP program work?

In theory, it all sounds nice. The idea is simply to train students to be alert to dangers and to “get the message to sink in” using graphic demonstrations of the power of autos to kill and maim.

The utility of such programs, however, can be difficult to measure.

Will North Carolina auto accidents among teens decrease after the rollout of this program? And even if the numbers get better, can you credit the program, or might another factor be responsible? Picking out “cause and effect” in a car accident data can be a fraught business. If you blame the wrong cause, the adjustments you make to policy can have dangerous affects.

Consider the old tale about the drunk searching for his keys under a street light. A police officer comes up to him and asks “Is this where you dropped your keys?” To which the drunk replies, “No, but this is where the light is.” The moral here is: it’s easy to “look where the light is.”

But to prevent accidents, we might do well by expanding our view of possible policy solutions. For instance, instead of just instructing teenagers once about the dangers of DUI and driving while text messaging; perhaps teens should be put through a series of programs – one every few months or so. This way, their visceral understanding of auto accident dangers won’t wane over time. After all, good data suggest that human beings need to re-learn new ideas multiple times. One exposure to scary information about car crashes may not be enough. We may need to show kids the dangers many many times before they deeply get it and change their habits accordingly.

If you or someone you care about has been hurt and needs legal advice, connect with a North Carolina auto accident law firm to go over your rights and figure out strategies to get fair compensation.

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VIP for a VIP program

North Carolina Highway Patrol

Two weeks ago, a horrific North Carolina car accident struck Columbus County, NC – 16-year-old Taylor Clark was arrested in connection to the death of her classmate, 17-year-old Seth Beaver. The text messaging related accident happened at the intersection of Fertilizer Plant Road and Old Highway 87. According to a WECT report, “troopers say Clark was charged with misdemeanor of death by motor vehicle, failing to yield, and texting while driving. Texting while driving became illegal in North Carolina at December 1, 2009. The law says the vehicle must be in park before you send a text message.”

Studies overseen by Virginia Tech, the University of Utah, and the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration all pretty conclusively show that driving while text messaging greatly increases the likelihood of your getting into a serious if not fatal accident. Indeed, some studies suggest that driving while texting can be even more dangerous than driving under the influence of alcohol and narcotics… believe it or not.

The scientific literature provides powerful suggestive evidence that “driver distraction” increases the likelihood of accidents. These dangerous distractions can include rubbernecking, listening to the radio, chatting on the cell phone (even on a handsfree headset!), fatigue, and even eating and drinking while driving.

That said, while distracted driving (texting in particular) is clearly a problem, what’s the appropriate policy remedy? How can we prevent tragedies like the one that befell Seth Beaver from tearing apart communities like Columbus County?

We need probing and objective analyses to understand our options.

In the face of all the evidence damning texting-while-driving, many states – including North Carolina – have adopted out and out bans of text messaging while driving. This policy prescription obviously makes good sense on surface. The reasoning is: if text messaging increases risk, then just ban text messaging, and you will reduce risk.

But studies last year revealed that this policy may not be delivering results. What’s going wrong? Perhaps people are just flouting the law. Or maybe the policy prescription (amazingly!) is not appropriate.

Perhaps a better solution might be a campaign to make the dangers of texting while driving more salient and emotionally “real” to drivers. For instance, what if young drivers in order to renew their licenses had to watch films about the dangers of texting while driving? This could alter the “culture” of texting while driving among teens — and it is this cultural behavior that likely contributes to a variety of North Carolina car accident injuries.

If you got hurt or injured in a motor vehicle crash recently, a North Carolina car accident law firm can provide critical advice to help you get compensation and to hold liable parties accountable.

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Taylor Clark Seth Beaver crash

North Carolina’s ban on texting while driving