STRAIGHT TALK LAW BLOG: TECHNOLOGY AND AUTO ACCIDENTS BY SEATTLE PERSONAL INJURY LAWYER JASON EPSTEIN

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In my recent article on “Distracted Driving,” I wrote about the alarming rise of auto and motorcycle accidents caused by today’s technology – most importantly, using cell phones for conversations and texting while driving.

As a personal injury and wrongful death attorney in the state of Washington, I’ve seen a marked increase in the rise in these kinds of auto accidents. Although statistics for just how many actual auto accidents are caused by distracted drivers are hard to come by – it’s usually difficult to know just what a driver was doing before a crash – a landmark research study from three years ago gives us some important clues.

In 2006, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that driver inattention was the leading factor in most auto accidents. To be more specific, they discovered that nearly 80 percent of crashes and 65 percent of near-crashes had some form of driver inattention involved within three seconds before the auto accidents occurred.

How did they determine this? They equipped 100 vehicles with audio and video monitoring equipment and tracked their drivers for over a year. The 241 drivers of the vehicles, when their totals are combined, drove over 2 million miles and were involved in 82 crashes and 761 near-crashes.

The study found, not surprisingly even then, that the most common distraction for drivers is the use of cell phones. What’s interesting is that dialing the number of the cell phone caused as many accidents as listening or talking – even though the amount of time spent on dialing was much, much less. That gives us another clue as to how dangerous today’s texting-and-driving epidemic is.

Washington D.C. is finally paying attention to the increasing amount of auto accidents caused by distracted driving. In addition to the government sponsoring a summit on the problem in October of 2009, President Obama recently signed an executive order banning federal employees from texting while driving in government cars. Senator Charles Schumer also introduced legislation that would have withheld federal money for roads from states that didn’t have some kind of law banning texting and driving in place.

We’re already distracted enough during the rest of our everyday lives. We need to avoid being driven to distraction when we’re behind the wheel – otherwise, our destination is inevitably going to be a tragic one.

For more free “Straight Talk Law” information, please visit my website at www.straighttalklaw.com , where you can order free books on personal injury lawyers, Washington auto and motorcycle accidents, auto insurance, and other valuable legal information, offered as a public service by myself and my law practice in Seattle, Washington.