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

North Carolina truck accidents are enormous and often catastrophic events. When we see the wreckage on local news reels or YouTube video clips, we are often dumbstruck at the carnage. Trucks are big. They are powerful. They are capable of not only destroying other vehicles on the road, but also of doing serious structural damage to roads, buildings, and structures like bridges and ramps.

Unfortunately, because the end results of accidents are so enormous and dramatic and emotionally gripping, we tend to think that the causes of these wrecks also must likely be big and easy to spot. We might, for instance, think that a truck driver that caused a big wreck on the freeway had been dosing himself with unbelievable amounts of methamphetamine. Maybe he was trying to drive across the country in 100 hours flat, without ever stopping to rest or sleep, for instance. And sometimes the cause IS dramatic — a brake snaps and fails during a critical freeway moment, for instance. But often, the root-cause of accidents is far more subtle:

•    A dirty windshield, for instance, can distract a driver, preventing him from seeing a truck approaching along his side;
•    A truck driver fails to notice a freeway sign that indicates that his particular type of vehicle should not be on the road, given the weather conditions or the size of his load;
•    The drivers of both vehicles get distracted by a sports game on the radio and thus fail to react with exquisite enough precision to avoid collision.

So you can have these subtle causes.

Here is something else that’s interesting. Many accidents have MULTIPLE causes – or contributing factors – some of which may be extremely subtle and difficult to detect, even with the most cutting-edge forensics. A truck driver who is borderline diabetic and who has blood sugar issues might, for instance, suffer a lapse of judgment – or a degradation in his driving capabilities. But unless you do blood work on that driver and manage to connect his pre-diabetes with the accident, this contributing factor would be very difficult to detect.

Fortunately, you don’t have to do the investigative and legal legwork by yourself. You can connect with an experienced North Carolina truck accident law firm, like DeMayo Law, to help understand your rights and potential avenues of recourse.

More Web Resources:

Subtle Factors which can Influence Your Driving

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?

When we talk about North Carolina car accident prevention, we usually stick to the basics and to reality – we talk about technologies like airbags, ABS, seatbelts, etc. We analyze the effectiveness of these technologies and speculate about how we could deploy them more frequently and in better and cooler ways. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this kind of thinking. But if you really want to make progress with North Carolina car accident prevention, you may need to go beyond the conventional ideas and really think about the nature of auto safety itself.

After all, auto safety is not just about technology! Nor is it just about driver behavior. Nor is it just about road engineering. Nor is it just about traffic control. Auto safety really is a broad discipline that can be affected — and can affect — many, many arenas of life. So when you look at improving auto safety just through the lens of “let’s build better technology to make people safer” you may be taking an overly narrow view of the subject.

There are undoubtedly many leverage points we could push on that would lead to better road safety. Improvements in driver behavior. Improvements in driver education and training. Improvements in road engineering. Improvements in automobile engineering. Improvements in the way that auto safety experts talk to one another and share solutions. Improvements in the science of auto safety and on and on.

But a more holistic appreciation of these factors is needed.

It’s needed not “real folks” — not just for the eggheads who come up with policies and write articles about this subject for public consumption. Driving can be a hugely perilous activity – as this blog and others have cited many times over, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration has estimated that 40,000 Americans die every year in car crashes… and millions are injured. This is a clear and present issue for all of us. We could probably benefit from knowing more about auto safety. Sure, it’s great to know that certain cars with ABS or with such and such kind of airbag are safer than other cars with different safety features. And yes: it’s good to be reminded of the fact that we need to keep our cars well maintained to avoid breakdowns like tire failures and faulty brakes. And it’s good to know that we shouldn’t be driving while overly fatigued or driving under the influence of alcohol or so forth.

But what ELSE might we be able to do to improve our safety consciousness – to protect ourselves and our loved ones out there? And perhaps, more interestingly, what “stuff” can we STOP doing that has really no affect on our safety – or a negative affect – and that costs us time and money and energy, only to give us a false sense of security?

This blog post obviously cannot answer all these questions. But it’s important to raise them and begin a more flourishing discussion about them, since so much is at stake for so many people.

That being said, if you’ve already been in an auto accident, you may benefit from talking with a North Carolina car accident law firm today.

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

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