Articles Posted in Auto & Car Accidents

The No. 1 safety fear of drivers age 50 and older is not being able to see clearly at night.

That’s according to the study “Enhancing Safety and Comfort For Mature Drivers” by The Hartford and the MIT Age Lab.

Twenty-four percent of those surveyed said night vision was their top concern. Other fears: distractions such as music and phones (13 percent), changing lanes in traffic (12 percent), and merging on the highway (12 percent).

One tragedy can lead to another, as shown by a car crash on I-20 that took the life of a 21-year-old Winthrop University student.

The fatal collision was part of a chain reaction that occurred as vehicles backed up on the interstate while authorities pulled another car from the Wateree River.

The accident victim, who died, was riding with her two roommates in a car struck by a Mercedes SUV. Both cars were approaching traffic that was stopped due to the recovery of a car submerged in the river containing the bodies of two missing North Carolina teens.

One out of every 126 cars in South Carolina will crash into a deer this year, according to State Farm Insurance, which has issued a “deer alert” to Palmetto State motorists.

South Carolina ranks 18th in the country for overall likelihood of striking a deer.

A recent case in point: A female motorcycle passenger was killed in a collision with a deer in Lexington County on October 24. Here is the WIS-TV report:

Not all automobile crashes involve one vehicle running into another.

Sometimes a vehicle crashes into someone’s home or store – and in South Carolina it is happening more frequently.

In the past year, at least 14 vehicles have smashed into residences or businesses in the greater Charleston area alone. A half-dozen of those wrecks occurred within the past month.

The sheriff of Lexington County recently asked bar owners to help deter drunken driving by not serving intoxicated customers. “I’m letting them know they have a part to play in this,” Sheriff James Metts was quoted in The State as saying. Metts said officers will increase patrols in areas around nearly a dozen bars.

According to The State and S.C. crash statistics, Lexington County is one of the most at-risk places in the state when it comes to drunk drivers. The idea to stop intoxicated drivers before they get behind the wheel came from a citizens group formed through the Lexington-Richland Alcohol and Drug Abuse Council. According to the group, drivers in the area may think there is little risk in getting behind the wheel while under the influence. The group also called for stronger efforts to prevent people from drinking too much and to stop people from driving after they have been drinking.

Not all bar owners are thrilled by the initiative. The Alcohol and Drug Abuse Council says that it can be a struggle to get some bar owners to cooperate with the group’s efforts to schedule training for bar employees so they can identify and handle intoxicated customers.

In a new test from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety mimicking a common crash condition overlooked by many car makers and safety experts less than 30 percent of the tested cars earned good or acceptable ratings. The new test is called the “small overlap frontal crash test.” It is different from older frontal crash tests, because only part of a car’s front end hits an obstruction in the new tests. Objects collide with the outside edges of the car, which are often not directly protected by a vehicle’s safety cage — a structure that safeguards the essential “survival space” in a vehicle, or the area that resists collapsing in a crash.

The IIHS says that these front-end overlap crash safety tests aren’t carried out elsewhere in the United States or Europe except in a handful of automaker tests. The fact that this kind of test isn’t more common is alarming, especially when small overlap front-end accidents make up almost 25 percent of all frontal crashes that result in a death or serious injury, says the IIHS. Front-end crashes account for more than 10,000 deaths each year, the IIHS says.

The IIHS says the new test is designed to follow what happens when an auto strikes another object like a tree, pole or even another auto at around 40 mph. In these types of crashes, experts say, crash energy isn’t sent to a vehicle’s safety cage or “crush zone,” which is designed to keep a vehicle from collapsing on passengers in a crash. In these overlap crashes, energy is instead sent directly to a vehicle’s front wheel, suspension system or firewall. Alarmingly, testers say they saw examples of serious “intrusions” by wheels and other parts of the car into vehicle cabins. They also saw cases where a test dummy was knocked around so much that it missed the airbag and struck other parts of the vehicle, which would cause serious injury or possibly death in a real-world crash.

When a person is in a traumatic car accident, every minute counts. The sooner they can be put into the hands of a trained medical team, the higher their chance is of survival. This time after the traumatic event is referred to in the medical community as the “golden hour”, the time in which life and death hang in a delicate balance.

John Hopkins Study On Emergency Response Time

There have been many studies on the effect of emergency response time to the survival rate of victims. Unfortunately, many of these studies have not taken into account the seriousness of the injuries, comparing broken legs with cardiac arrests. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April 2012 actually took the level of injury into account, making it a true study of how response times affect survival.

According to information gathered by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), in recent years South Carolina has proved itself to be the deadliest state for accidents involving drunk drivers in the United States.

Just before the 4th of July holidays (one of the deadliest times of year for all drivers), Congress approved changes to Federal transportation policies under a series of programs and laws called the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century, or MAP-21 bill. Though MADD and some other safety advocates say the changes are aimed squarely at eliminating drunk driving, others say the law goes too far.

The biggest changes in law involve technologies that may help prevent drunk drivers from being able to operate vehicles in the first place. The MAP-21 bill includes a grant program meant to encourage states to adopt laws allowing the use of ignition interlock devices in the vehicles of those convicted of drunk driving. When a driver has an ignition interlock device in his or her vehicle, the unit makes a driver test their blood alcohol content (BAC) before they can start the vehicle–much like a Breathalyzer. If a driver’s BAC is above the .08 legal limit, the vehicle will not start.