Chicago Car Accident Lawyers Blog

In a relatively rare bit of good news for Detroit, a traffic safety group announced recently that it rated 72 model-year 2009 vehicles as “Top Safety Picks.” The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an insurance-industry research group, rates brand-new cars each year according to how well they protect passengers in front, side and rear impacts. The press release announcing this year’s picks noted that the 72 models that made the cut this year are more than twice as many as the 2008 crop, and nearly three times the number with the top rating in 2007.

To qualify as a top safety pick, cars, trucks and SUVs must have electronic stability control as a standard or optional feature. Electronic stability control uses computers to automatically detect skids and correct steering by applying brakes in a way that sends the vehicle where the driver is trying to go. Vehicles also must get top scores in IIHS crash tests for front, side and rear impacts, taking into account the availability of safety features like side curtain airbags and correctly designed head restraints. Frontal-impact crash tests are conducted at 40 mph; side crash tests at 31 mph; and rear crash tests measure force on the neck during a 20-mph rear-end accident.

As an Illinois car accident lawyer, I’m interested in vehicle safety ratings in part because not every vehicle deserves an A. Substantial safety defects in new cars (and older ones) are more common than you might think. You may remember the Bridgestone/Firestone tire recall about a decade ago, which affected hundreds of thousands of cars and trucks; those tires are actually blamed for multiple deaths from tire blowouts that caused drivers to lose control at high speeds. Other dangerous flaws in vehicles include improperly attached seatbelts; SUVs and vans prone to rollover accidents; and improperly placed fuel tanks that can burst into flames.

A new study weighs in on an ongoing debate: Is talking on a cell phone truly more distracting than talking to someone in the car with you? According to researchers at the University of Utah, the answer seems to be yes. The study, published Dec. 1 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, asked drivers ages 18 to 26 to chat while they used a sophisticated highway driving simulator. They were asked to tell a friend — either over the phone or in the “car” — about a life-threatening situation they’d been in. A control group of drivers not talking at all was also included.

The study found that drivers talking on the phone were four times more likely to miss their exit than drivers talking to a live human in the next seat. About half of the subjects talking on a hands-free phone missed their “highway” exit, while just one-eighth of the drivers talking to a traveling companion missed it. Drivers on the phone were also more likely to drift from their lanes and leave too much following distance between them and the vehicles in front of them. Interestingly, the study found no substantial difference in the driving of people talking to passengers and people not talking at all.

The researchers had several possible explanations for their results. One is “inattention blindness,” a phenomenon in which the brain’s ability to process visual information is actually reduced while the person is talking on the phone or distracted by another abstract task. Another explanation is that passengers in the vehicle can help drivers concentrate by steering or changing the conversation in response to events on the road. In fact, the study found that passengers did talk about traffic with the drivers. It also found that drivers on the phone tended to change the complexity of their sentences and talk more when driving tasks became difficult. Researchers speculated that this might be an attempt to control the conversation, so they didn’t have to pay close attention to it.

According to new federal statistics, your risk of being involved in a fatal traffic accident just got lower. In November, the federal Department of Transportation reported that traffic fatalities actually went down for most groups between 2006 and 2007. The new numbers come from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal agency responsible for tracking and preventing auto accidents, through its latest collection of Traffic Safety Facts. These factsheets use data compiled from more than 40,000 crashes around the United States in one calendar year to present crash and fatality rates for specific groups. Groups covered include occupants of cars, large trucks and motorcycles, pedestrians, cyclists, older people and children.

The NHTSA’s research has good news for almost all of those groups. Nearly every group has seen a drop in fatal accidents. Between 2006 and 2007, fatal accidents affecting pedestrians dropped by 2.9%; bicyclists and other cyclists, 9.5%; and large commercial trucks, 3.8%. Among children 14 and younger, there was a 6.9% decrease in fatalities in all types of traffic accident; among drivers 65 and older, the decrease was 1.6%. While the factsheet for auto accidents is still on its way, a preliminary report published in August says accidents among passenger cars, trucks and SUVs dropped by 5.7%, which includes a 7.8% drop in fatal accidents involving just cars. Unfortunately, Illinois alone saw a negligible 0.4% drop in fatal accidents.

The major exception was motorcycle riders and their passengers. (The NHTSA includes riders of scooters and mopeds in its motorcycle statistics.) Motorcyclists actually saw a 7% increase in fatalities between 2006 and 2007. In fact, this reflects a steady climb in motorcycle fatalities over the last decade. The factsheet doesn’t say why this might be, but a separate report (PDF) by the NHTSA shows that more motorcycles are being registered, new motorcycles are likely to be larger, and that the rate of brand-new riders over 40 jumped by more than 200% during the past decade. The report doesn’t speculate on how these facts might influence accident rates, but they’re certainly something for older motorcyclists to consider.