Chicago Car Accident Lawyers Blog

The State of Missouri has barred a Chicago auto insurance company from doing business with motorists in that state, after the company was accused of unfairly denying claims, offering unreasonably low settlement offers and failing to respond to or properly investigate claims filed by policy holders in a timely manner.

The Chicago car accident lawyers at Abels & Annes urge motorists to check the complaint history of their insurance company before choosing or renewing your policy.

The Illinois Department of Insurance offers shopping tips and Illinois complaint historiesfor motorists choosing an insurance company.

Illinois records indicate the insurance carrier had 260 complaints in 2007 — the highest number of any auto insurance company in Illinois.

Missouri’s Department of Insurance reported they have more than 13 times the typical number of consumer complaints for a company it’s size — 63 complaints have been filed so far this year.

“The department has serious concerns about Universal Casualty’s ability to comply with Missouri consumer protection laws and treat its customers fairly,” said John Huff, director of the Missouri Department of Insurance, Financial Institutions and Professional Registration (DIFP). “We need to be convinced that the company has sufficient staffing and resources for handling insurance claims. Until then, we cannot allow the company to sell new policies in Missouri.”

The order forbids the company from writing any new policies in the state but allows it to service current policies. The state reported the company wrote $5.9 million in premiums last year.

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Specific circumstances, occupations and health issues can put you at higher risk for drowsy driving. But in reality we are all at risk from sharing the road with drowsy drivers.

As part of its Summer Safe Driving series, the Chicago car accident lawyers at Abels & Annes look at the affects of drowsy driving on your roadway safety and offer some tips to avoid drowsy driving.

While night drivers are at highest risk from drowsy drivers, statistics also show a surprising spike in mid afternoon.

The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates 56,000 crashes a year are caused by drowsy drivers, including 1,550 fatal crashes.

Specific risk groups include young people, especially males under 25; commercial drivers, especially long-haul truckers where drowsy driving is blamed for 15 percent of all heavy truck crashes; business travelers and people with health problems or sleep disorders.

The rest of us can put ourselves at higher risk. Risk factors include, sleep deprivation and fatigue (6 hours of sleep or less per night); insomnia and poor sleep quality; driving long distances without proper rest breaks; driving through the night, near sundown, during mid-afternoon or when you would normally be asleep; taking sedatives like antidepressants and cold medicines; working more than 60 hours a week or working shift work; and drinking even small amounts of alcohol.

Signs you are a drowsy driver, according the the National Sleep Foundation:

* Difficulty focusing, frequent blinking, or heavy eyelids
* Daydreaming; wandering/disconnected thoughts
* Trouble remembering the last few miles driven; missing exits or traffic signs
* Yawning repeatedly or rubbing your eyes
* Trouble keeping your head up
* Drifting from your lane, tailgating, or hitting a shoulder rumble strip
* Feeling restless and irritable

Adequate sleep and planning:

Before hitting the road, drivers should:
* Get a good night’s sleep. Sleep experts recommend between 7-9 hours of sleep per night.

* Plan to drive long trips with a companion. Passengers can help look for early warning signs of fatigue or switch drivers when needed. Passengers should stay awake to talk to the driver.

* Schedule regular stops, every 100 miles or two hours.

* Avoid alcohol and medications that may impair performance. Alcohol interacts with fatigue, increasing its effects – just like drinking on an empty stomach.

* Consult your physician or a local sleep disorders center for diagnosis and treatment if you suffer frequent daytime sleepiness, often have difficulty sleeping at night, and/or snore loudly every night.

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More than 1.5 million people will get into a car accident this year because of driver distraction, according to federal statistics.

That’s more than 4,300 crashes a day!

The Chicago car accident attorneys at Abels & Annes, handle cases often where someone was injured or killed by a distracted driver. As part of its Summer Safe Driving series, the firm urges everyone to take a minute and review their driving habits to eliminate points of distraction.

Eighty percent of the nation’s 6 million auto accidents are caused by some form of driver distraction in the three seconds leading to the collision, according to a landmark 2006 study conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

AAA has also studied the issue and provides a number of driver resources.

The problem is so serious that Illinois commissioned a distracted driver task force that issued its final report last year.

Legislation sponsored by Illinois Rep. William Blake, R-Danville, would create a misdemeanor category of negligent vehicular homicide, which could result in up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine for distracted drivers who cause a fatal accident. Black pushed for the reform after a 25-year-old Urbana cyclist was killed by a driver who went off the road while downloading ring tones on her cell phone.

The NHTSA found:
-Reaching for a moving object while driving increases your risk of a crash by 9 times.
– Dialing a hand held device increases your risk of an accident by 3 times.
– Looking at an external object increases your risk by 3.7 times.
– Reading or applying makeup increases your risk by 3 times.

The state’s distracted driving task force notes Illinois has been a leader in battling distracted driving, with a number of laws on the books, including: prohibiting driver headsets in 2001; prohibiting bus drivers from operating cell phones in 2002; prohibiting media technology other than navigation systems from being visible to the driver; and prohibiting drivers under 19 from using cell phones.

A national survey revealed the following typical driver distractions:
– Talking to passengers – Adjusting vehicle climate/radio controls – Eating – Using a cell phone – Tending to children – Reading – Grooming -Preparing for work
Signs you are a distracted driver:
– Has a passenger in your vehicle screamed or gasped because of something you did or did not do?
– Have you ran a stop sign or traffic control device unintentionally?
– Have you slammed on the brakes because you did not see the car in front of you stop?
– Have you ever reached your destination and not recalled part or all of the journey?

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A Chicago man caused a rollover car accident this week after attempting to make a U-turn across three lanes of traffic to get to Hooters.

“He decided he wanted to go to Hooters and decided to make a U-turn” across three lanes of traffic after passing the establishment on the Chicago side of the street, Park Ridge Police Cmdr. Lou Jogmen told the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate. As he made the turn he reportedly collided with the Jeep, causing the vehicle to flip over and land on its roof just west of the restaurant.

Nobody was seriously injured so the incident is worth a small chuckle.

Yet, not only was the driver cited for driving with a suspended license but the improper lane change and improper U-turn are both cited by the State of Illinois as leading causes of aggressive driving accidents.

More than half of all fatal accidents are caused by some form of aggressive driving, according to the AAA foundation.

The driver of the Jeep was not seriously injured and had exited the vehicle before police arrived. Police say they want to present him with a “Saved by the Belt” award for wearing his seat belt at the time of the auto accident.

But the newspaper photo shows that this accident could have easily resulted in serious injuries. And anyone involved in a rollover accident should take the time to be examined by a physician.

Aggressive drivers who cause serious accidents can face fines and jail time, depending on the circumstances.

No word on whether the culprit every made it to Hooters. But it’s safe to say it was way later that he had hoped.

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More than half of all fatal car accidents in 2007 occurred on roads where the legal speed limit was 55 mph or greater.

As part of its Summer Safe Driving series, the Chicago car accident attorneys at Abels & Annes look at how speed impacts your safety behind the wheel of an automobile.

Almost 10,000 people were killed and more than 356,000 injured in 2007 on roads where the speed limit was 55 mph or higher, according to federal statistics.

Fully 90% of all licensed drivers speed at some point in their driving career; 75% admit to committing this offense regularly, according to Smart Motorist.

Smart Motorist uses the following example of a motorist and a pedestrian to illustrate speed:

If the car is traveling at just 30 mph, and the driver brakes when the pedestrian is 45 feet away, there will be enough space in which to stop without hitting the pedestrian. Increase the vehicle speed by just 5 mph and the situation changes dramatically. At 35 mph, with the pedestrian 45 feet away and the driver braking at the same point, the car will be traveling at 18 mph when it hits the pedestrian. An impact at 18 mph can seriously injure or even kill the pedestrian.Speed is cited as a factor in 30 percent of all crashes. In a study of 2,000 crashes in Indiana, excessive speed for conditions was identified as the second-most frequest cause of about 50 driver, vehicle and environmental factors.

Yet, perhaps surprisingly, speeding is not the lone culprit for speed-related accidents — driving too slowly also can increase your chances of an accident.

A landmark study as far back as 1964 found accident rates increase sharply for folks traveling either above or below the mean speed — in other words for those traveling either faster or slower than the norm for other drivers on the road.

However fatality rates for speeders are undisputed and increase exponentially with speed. That means an accident is not twice as likely to be fatal at 50 mph than at 25 mph — federal research shows it is 15 times more likely to be fatal.

Excessive speed reduces a driver’s ability to negotiate curves or maneuver around obstacles in the road, extends the distance necessary to stop and exponentially increases the force of impact.

The risk of fatality begins to rise with speeds over 30 mph and is more than 50 percent likely to be fatal at speeds over 60 mph. Moreover, the probability for death is 15 times higher at 50 mph than at 25 mph, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

Federal statistics also show higher mean speeds for younger drivers, especially in high-performance vehicles. Young males were most at risk, nearly 40 percent of fatal crashes involving males age 15 to 20 years old were speed related, according to a 1995 study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Speed facts provided by the Federal Highway Administration:

-The evidence shows that the risk of having a crash is increased both for vehicles traveling slower than the average speed, and for those traveling above the average speed.

-The risk of being injured increases exponentially with speeds much faster than the median speed.

-The severity of a crash depends on the vehicle speed change at impact.

-There is limited evidence that suggests that lower speed limits result in lower speeds on a system wide basis.

– Most crashes related to speed involve speed too fast for the conditions.

-More research is needed to determine the effectiveness of traffic calming.

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Chicago is on course to triple the number of red-light cameras at intersections in a move the city contends is reducing car accidents while providing an increasing source of revenue in the face of a projected $300-million budget gap.

The Chicago car accident attorneys at Abels & Annes are watching the impact of the program in Chicago and elsewhere as an increasing number of personal injury and wrongful death lawyers are moving to use the tapes in court to assist in recovering damages from negligent drivers who injure or kill innocent motorists.

Last week, City Council Finance Committee Chairman Edward M. Burke proposed increasing the fine from $100 to $125 and using the extra money to require offenders to complete a “Red Light Education Program.”

“Clearly, when you’re talking about 27 percent of the six million accidents that occur on U.S. roadways every year occurring at intersections, it would seem to be a move in the right direction,” Burke told the Chicago Sun-Times.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration counted 6,024 fatalities at stop signs or traffic signals in 2007 and more than 600,000 injuries.

Chicago red-light cameras are already installed at 143 accident-prone intersections in the city – with 39 more expected to go up later this year and 330 intersections expected to have cameras by 2012.

The Sun-Times notes that while changing driver behavior is the ultimate goal, the cameras have become a giant cash cow for the city — generating $44.8 million last year. And earlier this year council was pitched a proposal that claimed $200 million a year could be made by using the cameras with a program that referenced insurance data to hunt down uninsured motorists.

Such alternative missions of the cameras have been questioned by organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union as far back as 2001.

“The ACLU is most concerned about what we call “mission creep” — that the data collected by these cameras will be used for purposes other than tracking reckless drivers,” Barry Steinhardt, Associate Director of the American Civil Liberties Union said at the time. “Government and private-industry surveillance techniques created for one purpose are rarely restricted to that purpose, and every expansion of a data bank and every new use for the data opens the door to more and more privacy abuses.”

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More than half of deadly car accidents potentially involve one or more unsafe driving behaviors typically associated with aggressive driving, according to a 2009 update on aggressive driving provided by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

When many drivers think of aggressive drivers, they likely think of crazed guys shaking their fist (or at least a finger or two) while weaving in and out of traffic. But the Chicago car accident lawyers and personal injury and wrongful death attorneys at Abels & Annes want you to take a moment and think about aggressive driving habits you may have adopted without even realizing it.

Ever speed? Do you sometimes hit the gas a bit to make it through a yellow light? Is diving for an open parking space your thing? Take a moment. Take a breath. And ask yourself, what is it really worth?

In AAA Foundation’s 2008 Traffic Safety Culture Index, 78 percent of respondents rated aggressive drivers as a serious or extremely serious traffic safety problem — yet nearly half admitted to exceeding the speed limit by 15 mph on a major highway in the last month!

Substantial numbers also admitted to speeding up to beat a traffic light, honking at other drivers, and tailgating other drivers in an attempt to get them to speed up.

Nationally, at least 1,500 men, women and children are seriously injured or killed as a result of traffic disputes or altercations each year.

Another AAA survey of 526 motorists found almost 90 percent had experienced “road rage” incidents during the last year. Aggressive tailgating (62 percent) was the most common, followed by headlight flashing (59 percent), obscene gestures (48 percent), deliberately obstructing other vehicles (21 percent) and verbal abuse (16 percent).

Gender differences were not as great as expected. Just over half of women admitted to aggressive driving behavior compared to about two-thirds of men.

Nationally, an increasing number of studies are sounding alarms. As a nation, only two percent say drivers are getting better, while 62 percent, or about two of every three motorists, say things have gotten worse on our roads.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration counts the following behavior as forms of aggressive driving:

-Following improperly
-Improper or erratic lane changing
-Illegal driving on road shoulder, in ditch, or on sidewalk of median
-Passing where prohibited or where there is insufficient visibility or distance
-Suddenly changing speeds
-Failure to yield right of way
-Failure to obey traffic signs, devices, safety zones or other traffic laws
-Failure to observe warning instructions on vehicles displaying them
-Speeding or driving too fast for conditions
-Racing
-Improper turns
The federal government offers drivers the following tips:

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