Illinois and Missouri Motor Vehicle Accidents Law Blog

April was Distracted Driving Awareness Month in Illinois and across the country. It was an appropriate month for the campaign, considering that driving tends to increase in the summer – particularly among teenagers who are out of school.

Now that May is here, we mark another seasonally appropriate campaign: Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month. The weather has gotten warmer and more motorcyclists will be out riding this summer. That means a much higher risk of serious and fatal motorcycle accidents. Motorcyclists are about 5 times more likely (than drivers) to be injured in a crash, and about 27 times more likely to be killed.

The data on distracted driving is all one-sided. There are no studies showing that it’s a harmless diversion from boring driving. Each and every study of the growing problem shows different aspects of a phenomenon that is increasing the risks of being involved in a motor vehicle accident that causes injuries or fatalities.

The traffic data firm Zendrive recently took usage data from millions of cellphones and asked drivers how well they focus on the road and traffic in an effort to determine how well people assess their own use of their phone while they’re behind the wheel. The results of this latest research are not encouraging.

It’s common to hear about truck accidents occurring on expressways through Illinois. At the very least, such crashes cause traffic delays. However, the real issue is the truck size. Big-rigs are generally many times larger than other vehicles on the roads, and a truck accident will often involve multiple vehicles. Fatal truck accidents often result in the deaths of occupants in much smaller vehicles.

One car insurer recently published an article discussing the most common reasons that commercial truck accidents occur. The five reasons they list for such accidents include:

As many regular readers of our Motor Vehicle Accidents Law Blog know, April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month. And state troopers in central and southern Illinois are joining law enforcement agencies in Missouri and across the nation in reminding drivers that it is time to pay attention to the roads and traffic rather than their phones or in-dash devices.

The Illinois State Police says it will have more troopers available to write citations for those drivers looking at their phones while behind the wheel. The hope is that a ticket will get drivers to change their behavior and make them less likely to cause a motor vehicle crash with injuries and possibly fatalities.