When a semi-truck rear-ends you, you are in big trouble. The sheer size and weight of the truck makes commercial trucks especially deadly. They often weigh 20-30 times as much as a passenger car.
In the U.S., most traffic fatalities are down, but fatalities from truck accidents have ben rising since 2009, when they hit an all-time low. In 2018, 4,136 people died in crashes with big rigs. Among them, 119 died when trucks rear-ended them.
As a percentage of all traffic fatalities, those caused by drunk drivers are decreasing. That’s great news, but drunk-driving accidents still account for 29% of all traffic fatalities.
Drunk driving is still a huge problem. In 2018, an alcohol-related fatality occurred about every 50 seconds in the United States. That’s 29 deaths a day.
You have probably heard of telematics, even if you are not familiar with the name. It is also known as usage-based insurance or pay-as-you-drive insurance. The idea is for your auto insurance company to set your premium rates based on your actual driving behavior. If you have good driving habits, you pay less for your insurance, and vice versa.
With telematics, the insurance company determines whether you have good driving habits by installing a device on your car that can record certain things about your driving and report back. The simplest programs simply count the number of miles you drive and offer discounts to those who drive fewer miles than average. (The fewer miles you drive, the lower your average accident rate.)
Even as advances in safety features have brought the overall rate of traffic fatalities down, the number of pedestrians being killed on U.S. roads has risen over the last decade. Part of that could be the fact that SUVs have grown in popularity.
This is because, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, pedestrians are at greater risk from SUVs than from passenger cars.
Recently, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) calculated driver death rates in 2017 model vehicles. The independent, nonprofit safety group found substantial evidence that smaller cars fare worse in crashes.
According to the IIHS, it appears that the lighter mass of the vehicles puts them at a disadvantage over larger vehicles in a collision. In fact, vehicles defined as “very large SUVs” were the best in any vehicle category for preventing deaths, with only 15 fatalities per million registered vehicles. On the opposite end of the spectrum, however, minicars had the highest rate at 82 fatalities per million registered vehicles.
If you have been hit by a marijuana-impaired driver, you have been personally affected by a powerful trend. Now that the majority of states have legalized marijuana for some purposes, you might expect that the rate of impaired driving would be higher. You would be right to be concerned.
Marijuana does impair the ability to drive
Surprisingly, some people don't realize that it is illegal to drive while high, but it is. This is true even in California and other states where marijuana is legal for recreational purposes.
Recently, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) requested public comments on proposed regulatory changes to the occupant protection rules for self-driving vehicles. Anyone can comment on the rule, and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and Highway Loss Data Institute recently submitted theirs based on years of research.
How should the occupants of autonomous vehicles be protected in the future? Currently, there are different crash survivability rules for the driver's seat, the front passenger seat and the rear seat.
Not necessarily, according to a recent study. Their ability to out-perform humans in terms of safety will depend not only on the accuracy and reliability of their sensors but also on how they weigh the importance of safety.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) studied a set of nationally representative auto crashes and examined their causes. Then, the group tried to predict whether an automated vehicle might have been able to avoid the crashes.
Distracted driving behaviors can be either visual, auditory, manual (movement), cognitive (thinking), or a mixture of any four combined. Most drivers know that texting or talking on the phone while behind the wheel is considered distracted driving, but eating, applying makeup and other minor activities can cause distractions too. All these actions divert our attention, but how can they affect your insurance rates?
While distracted driving still accounts for 1,000 traffic-related injuries and nine deaths per day in the United States - or 8.5% of all fatal traffic accidents - data from the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) provides a silver lining. Traffic fatalities decreased 1-3% in the following categories in 2019:
It can be hard to tell how prevalent fatigued or drowsy driving actually is. After all, a car crash tends to wake you up. Many people who have fallen asleep behind the wheel will be wide awake when it comes time to explain. That can cause law enforcement to underestimate the effect fatigue may have had on the accident.
Just how common is drowsy driving? Likely, very common, according to estimates.
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