Are Automobile Fumes More Deadly Than North Carolina Auto Accidents Themselves?
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?
