Fatal Car Crashes on The Rise

The National Highway Traffic Administration has recently posted the latest traffic fatality figures and they show deadly car crashes rising to a nine-year high.  The statistics show that car accidents accounted for 37,461 fatalities in 2016 which is a rise of 5.6% over 2015.  Personal Injury lawyer Peter Zneimer notes that surprisingly, distracted driving deaths actually fell 2.2% from 2015 to 2016.  Two categories where fatalities did rise were deaths caused by speeding (4% rise) and deaths caused by not wearing seat belts (4.6% rise).  The attorneys of Zneimer & Zneimer, P.C.  are concerned that the NHTA recorded a 9% jump in pedestrian deaths.  The large jump in pedestrian deaths underscore the need for more focus on making urban areas safer for pedestrians.  As discussed in previous Zneimer & Zneimer, P.C. blogs, the city of Chicago has endorsed the Vision Zero initiative which is a movement that seeks to eliminate pedestrian deaths entirely.  Cities that are adopting the vision zero philosophy utilize technology, traffic engineering along an emphasis of enforcing traffic safety laws to reach this goal. Pedestrians are the category of people that are most vulnerable to injury from traffic accidents.