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Everyone is a Distracted Driver

Rappaport, Glass, Green and Levine offer legal counsel to New Yorkers who have been injured in car accidents. If you or a loved one has been injured in a car accident, contact us for a free legal consultation today.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently engaged the help of the Gallup poll people to question 4,010 drivers who were 16 and older. They were asking these subjects to answer honestly about their driving habits. The results were not encouraging.

The question isn’t necessarily “Which unsafe driving habits do Americans engage in?” as much as it is “Which unsafe driving habits do Americans not engage in?”

Americans are changing radio stations, talking to passengers, looking for CDs or messing with their iPods, talking on the cellphone, text messaging, putting on makeup or even using wireless internet hookups while driving.

What this means to you is that it is becoming increasingly apparent that car accidents these days don’t just happen as much as they are “caused.” If you got hit by another driver, the odds are that it happened because the other guy was otherwise engaged instead of keeping track of the road.

Was it one of the 49% that likes to eat or drink on the road? Maybe they spilled hot coffee on themselves while they were making a lane change. Or did you get sideswiped by one of the 25% of drivers that have no problems talking on cell phones while driving?

Maybe the other driver was one of the 81% who talks to passengers while driving.

Maybe the other driver was one of the 66% who fiddles around on the radio, or wants to make sure that he has the right playlist going on his iPod.

If you have been injured by one of these drivers, you probably don’t really care what they were doing when they hit you. You probably just want to heal and be able to get back to work and provide for your family as quickly as possible. But maybe it is in your best interests to figure out what the other driver was doing, mainly because you have to wonder what the outcome would have been if the other driver hadn’t been on the phone, or fiddling with his iPod, or dipping his fries in ketchup while he was making that lane change.

At Rapaport, Glass, Green and Levine, we take great interest in the habits of the other drivers, because often this is exactly the reason that our clients find themselves in the hospital, or unable to go back to work. And it’s in the best interests of the insurance companies to keep you from finding out anything about the dangerous practices of their drivers. In fact, one of the reasons that they offer you a check so quickly is that they don’t want to give you any time to consider the reasons for the accident. They don’t want you to think about how the driver on their policy was doing everything but keeping their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel.

These are important questions to ask, mainly because how the wreck occurred should have a direct bearing on how you are compensated for your injuries. It isn’t the random happenings of the universe that caused the accident; it was the other driver text messaging his friends. It wasn’t something that “just happened.” It was the other driver checking her hair in the rear view.

If you or a loved one has been injured in an auto accident in New York, contacting Rappaport, Glass, Green and Levine can make all the difference in the world. Remember, talk to us before you talk to them.