Articles Posted in Pedestrian accidents

Faulty car brakes can cause horrific accidents usually resulting in serious injuries.  Federal regulators are working on new laws in the next couple of years that would require auto manufacturers to install automatic emergency braking systems in their cars. Safety advocates, however, are calling on regulators to require manufacturers to install systems that work in all light conditions, including at night.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has made it clear that it will be working on completing rulemaking by 2024, requiring auto manufacturers to install pedestrian automatic emergency braking systems in all their automobiles. These systems work at detecting pedestrians in the path of the car. There is significant research that shows the efficacy of these systems in helping protect pedestrians against accidents. For instance, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has conducted research that clearly shows the benefits of pedestrian automatic emergency braking systems in helping motorists to avoid pedestrians. Collisions with motor vehicles are a major cause of injuries and fatalities in pedestrian accidents every year.

The researchers found that the systems significantly help prevent collisions in the daytime. There isn’t significant data pointing to the effectiveness of the systems at night, however.  The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is calling on federal regulators to pressure automakers to install pedestrian automatic emergency braking systems that work both in the daytime as well as at night. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, it has found in its studies that these systems can be enhanced to make them very effective during low visibility conditions like night-time as well.

It’s been heartening to see a stronger emphasis on minimizing traffic accident fatalities, not just by auto safety organizations, but also by lawmakers. In recent weeks, a number of non-profit advocacy organizations have come together to support advocacy efforts as well as initiatives by lawmakers to minimize the number of Americans killed in traffic accidents.

Advocacy organizations like the Governor’s Highway Safety Association and Advocates for Highway and Highway Safety have spent months calling attention to the higher numbers of accident fatalities that occurred last year in spite of a 10% drop in the number of vehicle miles travelled. Those statistics indicate that we have a very serious problem with traffic safety in the United States. For one thing, too many U.S. cities are designed to make it easier to drive rather than walk or bike. Our transportation system, unfortunately, makes it easier to get from point A to point B using a car, as opposed to using mass transit or walking. Those are unacceptable realities, and simply add to the problem of our congested streets.

For our streets to be less congested and safer, we need to add bicycling and walking safely to the list of viable transport options. Safety advocates are calling for the installation of more dedicated and exclusive bicycle lanes in metropolitan areas, including the metro Atlanta region. Exclusive bike lanes are lanes that are meant solely for the use of bicyclists, and are separated from car lanes by a physical barrier that prevents them from coming into direct contact with cars. Experts at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute say that for bicycle lanes to be considered safe, they must be separated from car lanes by more than a slap of paint. Our roads need to be designed with the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists in mind. An overwhelming majority of metropolitan areas in the country are not designed to make it safer to bike or walk compared to drive.

The federal administration is marking the month of October as Pedestrian Safety Month, drawing attention to the need for motorists to make more efforts to look out for pedestrians while driving.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has marked the month of October as Pedestrian Safety Month with a singular goal in mind which is to raise awareness of the need to ensure that people can walk safely without the fear of accidents and to keep the safety of pedestrians in mind when they are out at all times. The National Highway Traffic Safety administration is dedicating each week in October to different safety themes.

Week 1 is dedicated to educating the public about the fact that at some point in the day, every person is a pedestrian. Whether you are walking into your office building from the parking lot, or walking home from work, you are still a pedestrian for a certain amount of time. Accidents can occur even in parking areas when motorists fail to look out for pedestrians who may be in the area.

Thousands of injuries every year occur in accidents caused when motorists crash into disabled vehicles that have been parked onto the side of the road and are not visible to motorists.

According to a new report published by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, these accidents result in hundreds of fatalities every year.  The data analyzed revealed that there were 566 car accident fatalities between 2016 and 2018, all involving accidents featuring a disabled or stopped vehicle. In all of these accidents, visibility was rated as a likely factor in the accident. These accidents resulted in more than 14,371 injuries, and cost more than $8.8 billion in lost income and other accident-related losses.

Visibility is often a major factor in these accidents. The researchers found that 95% of accidents involving stopped vehicles featured a vehicle crashing into the stationary or stopped vehicle. More than 50% of the fatalities involved a car hitting a person who was walking back to the stopped vehicle or working on the disabled vehicle. As many as one in 5 severe injuries were the result of such pedestrian motorists walking around the disabled car.  When the stopped vehicle situation occurs at night, it makes the chances of a collision ever more imminent.