Charlotte Car Accidents – Are We Getting the Root Cause Right?
What causes Charlotte car accidents? If you Google around, you’ll get the standard “obvious” answers: driver inattention, driver distraction, vehicle problems, problems with automotive components, problems with road design or engineering or maintenance, etcetera.
But does saying something like “driver inattention leads to accidents” give people meaningful, actionable information?
Perhaps. But perhaps not.
On one hand, you can look at statistics that support this view. People agree when you tell them that “not driving distracted/while drowsy” makes sense. But these people will still go out and do these things anyway.
As a result, we must conclude one of two things:
1. People, for whatever reason, are unwilling to take good advice.
2. People aren’t being given the right advice.
Everyone’s default assumption is that number one is true – that people drive drowsy or drive under the influence or drive while yapping on their cell phones due to ignorance of what those behaviors will ultimately lead to.
But what if there’s another explanation?
What if we simply lack systems and processes to help us avoid certain kinds of behavior?
Let’s make that more specific. Consider a highway trip along the East Coast from, say, Charlotte to Southern Florida. That’s over 1000 miles, but it’s a trip that many North Carolinians make on a fairly regular basis, especially during vacation season. So we have a culture, in other words, that makes it acceptable for people to drive 1,000 miles in one “sitting.” Not only does our culture make it acceptable but it also actively encourages this behavior. In fact, we have whole industries – the trucking industry, for instance – that encourage drivers to go long distances with minimal rest to get jobs done, move products and services, etcetera.
When accidents happen, we often blame the negligent drivers – for instance, the fatigued or medicated trucker. And that may be a fair thing to do. But if we really want to solve the root cause of many auto accidents in North Carolina, we need to possibly reconsider reengineering the broader structures and super structures that encourage people – or at least permit people – to engage in behaviors like drowsy driving or driving unextended trips without breaks.
Yes, we can blame a negligent or careless trucker for a single accident. And if you’ve been hurt by a trucker or by a bad driver, the team here at the Law Offices of Michael A. DeMayo can help you. But if we want to go beyond simply managing auto accident crises and move towards solving them, then we need to be open to the possibility that we may need to make major structural and cultural changes to our driving habits and beliefs about what the road is all about.
