PC Magazine Oprah Winfrey has been urging her viewers to promise not to text or make telephone calls while driving. Last Friday she dedicated her show to the subject. Some 23 states, including Tennessee, have laws banning texting while driving. Eight other states have partial bans on texting while driving. …
The Federal Highway Administration has ruled that the 2009 Edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices must be adopted by the states as their legal standard for traffic control devices within two years. Here is an excerpt of the Federal Register discussing the rule change. The MUTCD contains…
The Governors Highway Safety Administration has released a preliminary report indicating the motorcycle deaths have decreased on our nation’s highways. If the final numbers are substantially similar, deaths will have dropped for the first time in over a decade. Based on preliminary data gathered for the first nine months of…
Getting motor vehicle accident reports is a hassle, but is appears that it will be getting easier. BuyCrash.com makes accident reports from Georgia, Indiana, and Kentucky available for purchase over the Internet. Accident reports from Tennessee will be available in the future. Thanks to Chris Simon and the Atlanta Injury…
Truck drivers who text while on the road are now violating federal law. On January 26, 2010, the federal Transportation Department said it is prohibiting truck and bus drivers from sending text messages on hand-held devices while operating commercial vehicles. Tennessee banned texting while driving effective July 1, 2009. The Transportation…
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has set up a website called "Distraction.Gov." The website reveals some interesting statistics: In 2008, there were a total of 34,017 fatal crashes in which 37,261 individuals were killed. In 2008, 5,870 people were killed in crashes involving driver distraction (16% of total fatalities).…
The National Safety Counsel announced yesterday that it estimates at least 28% of all traffic crashes – or at least 1.6 million crashes each year – are caused by drivers using cell phones and texting. From the organization’s press release: The estimate of 25% of all crashes — or 1.4 million…
David Cline, the paramedic who was killed when the private ambulance he was driving slammed into the back of a TDOT roadside help truck on Interstate 65 on October 22, 2009, had a history of medical problems, including narcolepsy and epilepsy. Investigators are unsure why Cline left the highway but believe that the he…
NHTSA has released a report concerning fatal crashes by young drivers. The report shows that Youths 15 to 20 years old represented 9 percent of the U.S. population in 2007 and 6 percent of the licensed drivers; however, 19 percent of the fatalities in the United States in 2007 were…
According to NHTSA’s National Center for Statistics and Analysis there were 1035 people killed on Tennessee roads in 2008. Of those fatalities, 327 of them involved at least one driver who had a blood alcohol level of 0.8 or greater. This is an alcohol-related death rate of .47 people per 100…