Good driving skills are needed today in the US because there are so many drivers with different levels of skill on the road. A driver needs to mind the traffic laws, keep an eye on the road and also watch other drivers who may not be doing the same.
Currently, there are more than 250 million registered vehicles and at any given time up to one quarter of those vehicles might be on the road. With this amount of vehicles all moving near each other and sometimes at high speeds, motor vehicle accidents are quite common. They are in fact so common that we can expect that the vast majority of those on the road will be in an auto accident at some time during their lifetime.
Today there is a rush to find ways to decrease the amount of traffic accidents because they remain too high. Car tech companies continue to come up with new products and systems that improve car safety. Most new cars today have a range of systems that can avert and minimize the severity of a car accident. When all of the older cars on the road get replaced with new ones there will no doubt be fewer accidents. But until that time and even after that time as long as humans are driving, there will be many crashes, injuries and even deaths on the road.
Why there are so many car accidents
The reasons for so many accidents are consistent from year to year and many are avoidable.
Human Error and Negligence: Human error includes a range of different things that drivers do to cause car accidents. The most prominent are: driving while impaired which includes a driver who is drunk or on drugs, driving while distracted which includes testing and talking on the phone while driving and driving too fast, which not only includes speeding, a driver can be below the speed limit but driving too fast for the current road conditions. These reasons place the driver at fault in an accident and when they injure someone in a car accidents caused by one of these reasons, that person will often be entitled to compensation for the medical bills, pain and suffering, loss of income and other negative factors resulting from the accident. This is only a brief overview of this topic. For those who have been the victim of a car accident caused by human error or negligence, you need to discuss what happened with a reputable law firm like Christensen & Hymas who can help assess whether you have a case and then represent you.
Automobile Malfunctions: Autos are finely tuned machines that can run for thousands of miles without maintenance. With proper maintenance, most automobiles have very few problems until they get older. But with little or no maintenance automobiles can be quite faulty. On the road there are autos at every level of maintenance. Some maintenance like changing tires, brake pads, transmission fluid, and oil can be critical and if not maintained there is a good chance the car will malfunction and may make the driver have an accident.
The Elements: Snow, hard rain and even high winds can cause drivers to lose control of their autos causing car accidents. There are many famous freeway pile-ups caused by cars hydroplaning on a thin sheet of ice and not being able to stop. Some involve more than a dozen cars.
As long as there are automobiles, there will be accidents. But as car safety features improve we may one day reach a time where injuries and death from auto accidents near zero.