LOS ANGELES DISTRACTED DRIVING ACCIDENT LAWYER

Distracted Driving is a Growing Epidemic

Traffic fatalities are continuing their steep rise of recent years. In 2015, more people died in traffic collisions than in any other year since 2008, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. In even worse news, the first half of 2016 saw 10.4 percent more fatalities than the first six months of 2015, according to the New York Times. While safety features such as anti lock brakes, electronic stability control, front and side airbags, and other technological advancements have helped traffic fatalities decline decade after decade, deadly collisions have been surging for a variety of reasons since 2015. Much can be attributed to more cars simply being on the road due to temporarily low costs of fuel and a recovering economy after the 2008 financial crash. However, the increased numbers of cars on the road do not correspond with the huge increase in traffic fatalities. To discover the true cause of traffic danger, one needs only to look at driving behavior. At stop lights, how many people are looking at the road compared to looking down at their lap where their phone rests? Distracted driving is a growing epidemic of disastrous proportion as more drivers find it perfectly acceptable to take a quick glance at their phone to answer a text while they’re behind the wheel. Because of this behavior, thousands more Americans are needlessly dying every year.

Texting or using a non-hands-free cell phone device while operating a motor vehicle in California is against the law. According to the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), “The Wireless Communications Device Law states no driver in California may write, send, or read text messages while behind the wheel. Drivers may utilize a “hands-free device” unless they are under 18 years old, but certain hands-free device restrictions apply. However, even legal hands-free devices cause significant distraction. In fact, many studies have shown that simply talking on the phone, whether it is hands free or not, takes the driver’s mind off the road and task at hand, drastically increasing the likelihood of crashing. It is not just a failure to look up at the road, but a failure to truly see and recognize what is going on and how to safely navigate the road. According to the National Safety Council (NSC), “Estimates indicate that drivers using cell phones look but fail to see up to 50 percent of the information in their driving environment. Other studies observed by the NSC report that “Hands-free phone use led to an increase in reaction time to braking vehicles in front of drivers, and reaction time increased more and crashes were more likely as the traffic density increased.”

Examples of How Texting Even While Stopped at a Red Light is Dangerous Include:

• A driver texting while stopped at a red light lets their foot off the brake and drifts into the intersection, causing a wreck;
• A texting driver starts to move forward because they are honked at or see traffic to the side begin to move but, for a split moment, still have their eyes on their phone, run into the back of the car in front of them; and
• A texting driver at a stop sign or stop light begins to move forward without taking their eyes off the phone hits a pedestrian or cyclist because they were only relying on their peripheral vision.

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Attorney Vibhu Talwar

A Guilty Conscious Is Not Enough for Some to Come Clean. Negligent Drivers Lie to the Police and in Court

All too often a driver readily admits their fault at the scene of the crash only to go back on their word at a later date. While the cause of the crash may seem obvious at the time, and the distracted driver even admitted to you that it was their fault because they were on their phone, the truth does not always come out so easily. When giving their account of events to be taken down in the official police accident report, or later in court, negligent drivers often change their story to absolve themselves of guilt. Their goal is one of self-preservation. Either they want to keep additional points from being tallied to their driver’s license or they’re worried about their insurance premiums rising, many seemingly benevolent (at the scene of the crash anyways) drivers go back on their word. This is why preserving evidence such as jotting down eyewitnesses contact information is so important. Even more important is working with an experienced distracted driving attorney. While issuing a subpoena to look at the negligent driver’s cell phone records is rare and difficult to do in most car crashes, we may have the option to do this or to go through other means of proving their fault.

Fisher & Talwar

801 S Grand Ave, 11th Fl,
Los Angeles, CA 90017
(213) 891-0777

Mon-Fri: 9am-6pm
Sat-Sun: Closed
By appointment only.

Vibhu Talwar – vt@fishertalwar.com