Tailgating Leads to 7 Car Pileup | Bellevue Car Crash Lawyer

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Highways and freeways are not any more dangerous to drive on than other types of roads. In fact, they can be safer, as highways and freeways don’t have intersections that require hasty decision-making. However, as a Seattle car accident lawyer I know that there are always ways to make driving safer and thus more pleasant. The most obvious one is also the most simple – don’t follow the car in front of you too closely. Otherwise, a stranger’s mistake might lead to another, and another, and another, as was the case earlier this week.

On August 11^th, 2011 at about 5:15 p.m., a total of seven cars going southbound on I-5 collided with each other. The accident resulted in a four vehicles, including a box-truck, catching on fire. The freeway was backed up from South 375^th Street three miles south until firefighters could put out the raging flames. Washington State Trooper Cliff Pratt says nobody was seriously injured in the multi-car wreck, which was caused by the fact that the cars were following too closely to each other.

When each car represents a couple thousand dollars and at least one life, seven is a big number. As a Bellevue personal injury lawyer it’s hard to imagine that none of those drivers were unable to keep themselves from becoming a chain in the accident in broad daylight on a dry day. But if you are following the car in front of you too closely, you’ve chopped your time to stop and room to maneuver out of a collision in half. A possible culprit might also have been tailgating. Either way, the decisions the drivers made were dangerous ones and by the number of cars involved in the accident, perhaps we are facing an epidemic of poor driving.

Is the rear-end driver automatically at fault? Read our article about Seattle rear-end auto accidents to find out.