Houston Personal Injury Blog

It often seems as if everyone in Texas is in a hurry. Whether parents are frantically trying to get all of their kids to their extracurricular activities or college students are hurrying to their part-time jobs in between classes, getting from point A to point B as quickly as possible ranks high on most people's priorities. Because of this, most people see rising speed limits as a good thing. In reality, higher speed limits are causing more and more deadly car accidents.

Speed limits have been consistently going up all across the country for the last 25 years. Texas has some of the highest speed limits, and you can legally drive 85 mph on certain roads. These types of high speed limits are getting people killed.

The summer months mean that more people in Texas are taking to the road for trips, holidays and vacations. However, safety experts warn about the danger of serious car accidents in these heavily traveled months. The Governors Highway Safety Association is launching a public awareness campaign particularly targeting rear seat passengers to encourage them to put safety first. Passengers in the back seat enjoy more protections in some types of crashes. However, side-impact or rear-end crashes can be devastating and deadly for people sitting in the back seat.

The association noted the urgency of its campaign by highlighting the increased use of the rear seats due to the popularity of rideshare services like Uber and Lyft. Rear seat passengers are already less likely to wear their seat belts. However, this issue is exacerbated when people hop into a ride-hailing car. They are less likely to buckle up than they are in their own cars and may have an exaggerated sense of safety. Experts noted that buckling up is critical every time someone gets inside a car.

Motor vehicle accident fatalities in Texas and around the country fell by 2% in 2017, but the number of road users killed in crashes involving commercial vehicles rose by a worrying 9% to 4,761. That is the highest truck accident death toll in 29 years, and 72% of those killed were traveling in passenger vehicles that were struck by tractor-trailers. The sophisticated safety systems fitted to modern commercial vehicles do not seem to be enough to prevent accident deaths from rising even higher, and some road safety advocacy groups say federal hours-of-service rules could be the reason why.

Hours-of-service rules limit the time that truck drivers can spend behind the wheel. The rules are imposed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to prevent drowsy driving accidents, but critics of the rules say that the 30-minute break that truck drivers must take after eight hours on the road encourages dangerous driving. They say that truck drivers often imperil other road users by driving too fast because they are desperate to complete their journeys within eight hours.

Many drivers in Texas allow themselves to be distracted behind the wheel even though they know it's risky. An online study from Wakefield Research showed that almost half of respondents consider distracted driving to be a top roadway concern. However, the nearly 2,000 participants also used their phones behind the wheel for an average of 13 minutes a day.

Moreover, all but 1% of respondents recognized that phone use is among the top three distractions that a driver can engage in. The majority also criticized phone use in other drivers, with 89% saying they would give a bad rating to an Uber or Lyft driver who texts behind the wheel. Furthermore, 39% said they've already left bad reviews for such actions. Another 90% percent considered themselves better drivers than ride-hailing workers.