Georgia Injury Law Blog

Law enforcement agencies in the state have launched a campaign to encourage seatbelt use among Georgia drivers to prevent serious accident-related injuries, especially those occurring on rural roads. It is a shift from previous efforts that focused such enforcement in urban centers, and it has to do with the dismal picture of seatbelt use in rural areas.

According to Governor’s Office of Highway Safety deputy director Spencer Moore, rural roads are some of the most dangerous ones, but seat belt usage here is much lower than in urban centers. In 2008, drivers in urban areas in the state were 84 percent likely to buckle up, while in rural areas, that percentage was 79. The discrepancy in seatbelt usage in urban and rural areas is clear to see in the accident fatality rates in these regions. In 2007, 342 people died in automobile accidents in the five metro Atlanta counties. During the same period of time, 527 died in accidents in Georgia’s most rural counties.

Seatbelts save lives. While those higher fatality rates on rural roads may have to do with other causal factors like a shortage of trauma centers in these areas, seatbelts can prevent the kind of critical injuries that result after serious accidents.

Motorists in Georgia can look forward to repaired highways and safer streets that will reduce the risk of accidents. Governor Perdue last week approved $187 million from federal stimulus funds, which will be used in up to 51 road construction and repair projects in metro Atlanta.

In April, the governor approved $207 million to be spent on highway projects, and these recent funds are in addition to those funds.  All in all, Georgia is scheduled to receive $931 million for road improvement projects. Work on highways is expected to begin by summer. According to the Department of Transportation, there are dozens of projects that were in line for funds, but only those that are in poor condition or have had a high incidence of automobile accidents have been marked for construction work.

Here’s where some of those funds will go:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will soon have a new standard that promises to reduce injuries caused in car and light truck accidents.

The new standard will require the roofs of these vehicles to be able to withstand three times the curb weight of the vehicle. The old standard required the roof to withstand pressure that was only one and a half times the curb weight. That’s not the only change auto safety advocates and Atlanta car accident lawyers are happy about. The earlier standard placed a limit on the pressure applied to a vehicle during testing at 5,000 pounds. The new standard will no longer have that limit. Beside, pressure will be applied to both sides of the roof, and not to just one side during testing.

The changes and standards have pleased safety advocates, because these are much stronger than current standards that only test one side of the roof. The new standards come after about a decade of studies and research by the NHTSA. In 2005 , the agency was ordered to establish standards that would help protect drivers and passengers in rollover accidents. According to agency statistics, approximately 10,000 people die in such car accidents every year. Two thirds of these people die when they are ejected from the vehicle. The number of people who die because of a roof crush or collapse is 667. The agency believes that the new standards will save 135 lives every year, and prevent more than 1,000 injuries.

An investigation by CBS, Atlanta in April exposed a Roswell-based car dealership that concealed accident damage on the vehicles they sold, with sometimes disastrous consequences.

The dealership Ultra Cars, the investigation found, used to purchase cars that had frame damage at auctions, and sell these to customers. Those earlier car accidents were not reflected in Carfax reports, and gullible customers who walked into the dealership had no way of knowing that the car they were buying had earlier been in a major wreck. Frame damage can affect the structure of the car, and consequently its safety. The damage can decrease the value of a car and investigations revealed that salesmen at Ultra Cars didn’t reveal to customers the fact that the car had suffered accident damage earlier. At least one Ultra Car customer who was sold an accident-damaged-car has been involved in an accident. Keith Newton survived the crash, but the accident could have had fatal consequences. Later, he found that the car he had been sold had only been given a cosmetic patch-up job to cover major damage sustained in an accident.

The dealership has now closed down, but not before selling their vehicles to another dealership nearby. With most of Ultra Car’s vehicles sold to a new owner, the dangers from these cars haven’t disappeared yet.

A tragic car accident on Rockbridge Road in DeKalb County has killed two people, including a teenager.

According to this report, a car carrying six teenage boys crossed the center line and crashed into a Toyota Corolla, driven by 43-year-old Lisa Hutchinson. She died instantly. Her daughter was in the car with her, and suffered a broken collar bone and at least two fractures. The driver of the other car, a Honda Accord, also sustained injuries. One of the occupants of that car, 16-year-old Benjamin Bynum was also killed.  All the teenagers, students at Stephenson High School, have suffered minor injuries.

The 16-year-old driver is likely to face charges. According to police, alcohol doesn’t seem to have been a factor in the car accident.