“Car accidents” are not accidents. They are intentionally caused by careless and reckless driving, often speeding. A driver doesn’t accidentally speed or run a red light. Car CRASHES caused by a driver who chooses to exceed the speed limit needlessly claim the lives of countless victims each year. In the United States, car accident deaths took the lives of 37,133 people, with speeding responsible for almost 10,000 deaths in 2017.
Car accident deaths caused by speeding drivers happen here all the time
DFW and Texas are meccas for speeders. In just the latest shocking stories reported in the press in the last few days:
- Last night in Hurst on Loop 820, a woman who was driving 88 mph was chased by police, crashed, and died after running across the highway; and
- On Monday night in Dallas, a man died after he was speeding in the parking garage in the NorthPark Center, ran over and killed a pedestrian, and knocked another man over the edge to the street below.
In Texas last year, 3,721 people tragically lost their lives in speeding wrecks.
No other cause of car accident deaths was higher, even driving while intoxicated.
These speeding crashes also result in an estimated $42 billion in losses each year.
Why do people drive so fast?
Any driver knows that speeding increases his or her risk of being in a car crash. It is common knowledge that you won’t have enough time to stop to avoid colliding into another car, pedestrian, motorcyclist, or cyclist.
We handle many crashes caused by speeders in the Fort Worth-Dallas area each year and use evidence like the following to help our clients prevail in court or prior to trial:
- At a speed of only 40 miles per hour, the average car will require approximately 115 feet to come to a complete stop. That’s almost one-half the length of a football field.
- At a highway speed of 65 mph, he will need that entire field. It will travel almost 100 feet per second.
- Trucks, especially the big commercial ones, obviously require a much greater stopping distance.
A list was just published that showed that Texas police issued 228 tickets to drivers going over 120 mph — usually double or even three times higher than the speed limit. In Fort Worth, a guy was pulled over after going 86 miles over the speed limit and a motorcyclist was driving 156 mph on the Chisholm Trail Parkway. The Texas speed king was the driver of a Porsche 911 doing 166. Excuses included “I wanted to save a minute of time.”
Drivers who speed crash into other vehicles at a higher rate of speed and inflict more bodily injury to everyone involved, including themselves. Other vehicles will be crashed into as they slam on their brakes, which make them swerve and skid or cause a chain reaction.
Can Volvo solve the speeding problem?
The Swedish car maker is famous for promoting auto safety. It recently announced that it is installing speed limiters that will prevent their cars from going faster than 180 kilometers, or 112 miles per hour. Really, Volvo, that will help?
It also will consider high tech software that will force vehicles to slow down near schools and hospitals.
Volvo also stated its mission is zero fatalities by 2020. I wish them the best with these goals in reducing car accident deaths.
But this isn’t enough.
This reckless behavior has to be stopped with increased criminal and civil enforcement.
We need more police out on the roads and more fines and penalties to deter this conduct.
We need to force people to lose their licenses and car registrations so they can’t drive in the first place.
We need to hit them in their pocketbooks.
On the civil enforcement side, our firm just sued a major company when its 18-wheeler driver was speeding and crashed into our clients’ car.
We just resolved a case against another tractor-trailer company after its speeding driver caused someone to die and our client to have surgery.
We are in the process of filing a lawsuit against a teenager who crashed into our client’s vehicle at a high rate of speed in a 30 mph residential area, then tried to claim that the reason was the sun was in his eyes and his windows were a little steamed up.
We are handling many other cases where the negligent driver was speeding and are fighting to recover our client’s damages.
Related:
Top 5 causes of Texas traffic wrecks