Because we drive them every day, the streets, roads, and highways around, Macon and Warner Robins, can appear ordinary and unthreatening. Being familiar, they can lull us into a sense of complacency, where we think, "We've driven the road a 1000 times, we know every mile..." However, like water flowing in a river, the traffic on a road like I-75 is never exactly the same. This week, two people died on I-75 in a fatal car accident when they stopped to fix a flat tire and were struck by as many as six vehicles. The Morrow Police department was investigating the accident that occurred on I-75 at the ramp to Jonesboro Road. The two victims were from Texas and were identified as brother and sister. The accident happened when they stopped their vehicle in the "gore" of the road, the extra lane that develops when an on-ramp angles into the main road.…

When you are driving from Macon, up I-75 to Atlanta, or down I-16 to Savannah, there are things you can do to have a safer trip. If your vehicle is in good operation condition, you can make sure you have had enough sleep, don't speed, avoid any impairing alcohol or medicine and leave your cellphone turned off and out of sight. By remaining focused on the road and vehicles around you, you can greatly increase your chances of arriving safely. Of course, you can't control any of those behaviors in other drivers. If a fatigued truck driver falls asleep and crosses the median, you can only hope you are aware of it in time to take evasive action. All of your careful preparation and safe driving habits can be wiped out by a drunk driver speeding through a stop sign and striking your car broadside. With tens of thousands of car…

Driving north from central Georgia, one quickly runs into the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains, and while they lack the altitude of the Rockies, they can present many a challenge to a driver, from heavy rains and fog in summer to ice and snow in winter. These roads can be risky even in dry conditions, but when the weather turns dangerous roads can become deadly. In Virginia last weekend, a torrential rainstorm caused a 41-vehicle crash that shut down a section of Interstate 81 for hours and sent 10 people to the hospital, including two who need to be airlifted from the scene. The heavy rain combined with the sun coming out at one point, caused visibility to drop to less than 20 feet, according to one witness. Police attributed the car accidents to the rain and driving too fast for the conditions. These mass pile-ups can lead to horrific consequences,…

Drivers often overestimate their driving ability. As the tagline from the radio program says, all drivers believe they are above average. Combine this overconfidence bias with the familiarity of driving the same roads every day, and it can lead to tragic results. This is why people use a cellphone, send text messages or eat while driving. They believe they can handle it. The truth is, driving is an immensely difficult task, with the brain receiving hundreds of inputs every second for things that could be significant or important. Sometimes our brains are sidetracked by other activities like reading a text or changing radio stations. Most of the time, it does not matter. Nevertheless, at the wrong moment, that inattention can be the trigger for a tragic car accident. Even highly skilled and trained drivers can suffer that one unlucky moment. Yesterday, a crash occurred in Columbus that killed one undercover…

Technology has made cars safer. From seat belts, unibody construction with crush zones, airbags, ABS brakes, and collision avoidance systems have all combined to make cars safer and crashes more survivable than ever before.  These advances, along with better-engineered highways and stricter enforcement of drunk driving laws have helped reduced highway fatalities to their lowest level ever. Fewer people die in traffic accidents today than died in 1949, even though we drive about 3 trillion miles every year. But that does not mean there isn't a great deal of room for improvement. Annual highway fatalities still average more than 30,000 people, the equivalent of half the population of Warner-Robins dying every year. With the goal of further reducing car accidents and the death and injuries that accompany them, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has recommended that cars be equipped with systems that would allow them to communicate and provide an…

A recent study by the American Automobile Association (AAA) proves what some safety advocates and watchdog groups have been saying all along: it is no safer to use hands-free technology to text and send emails behind the wheel than it is to do them by hand. The study examined driver reaction times, brainwaves, eye movement, and other behaviors of people behind the wheel while performing a variety of "secondary tasks" like using hands-free/dictated texting, handheld texting, while talking on a mobile phone, listening to music (or audiobooks), while interacting with passengers and while only focusing on driving. The research showed that the level of distraction from hands-free and handheld texting/e-mailing was remarkably similar, something that has concerned legislators, automakers, technology companies, and safety experts alike, since hands-free technology has been touted for the past several years as being a much safer alternative to using hand-held devices while driving. The level…

A woman who had been accused of causing a car accident by street racing has been found by Georgia state trooper's investigators to not be responsible for the crash. The accident that happed back on May 10 left her boyfriend and 6-month old son dead. Because of initial reports and eyewitness interviews, the Georgia State Patrol had believed she was driving the vehicle and was involved in street racing. The vehicle had gone out of control, struck a guardrail, and was then struck by another car. The victims had all been taken to the hospital, and apparently, who was driving at the time of the car accident had become confused. This story highlights the difficulty of determining the facts in a car accident, why it can take so much time and can be so expensive. Car accidents can be tremendously violent events, vehicles can be ripped apart and, as with this…

When emergency vehicles respond to call, they often have to violate normal traffic laws. Of course, they are authorized to do so, as time is always of the essence, whether it is a police call, responding to a fire or an ambulance, or EMTs responding to a medical emergency. This creates additional risk, beyond those normally encountered on Georgia's highways. A recent car accident, involving a Warner Robins police officer and another driver, highlights those risks. The police officer's vehicle was divine east on Russell Parkway. He passed through a green light on Kimberly Road and struck the pickup truck. The pickup truck was making a left turn and apparently did not stop for the police vehicle. The car accident resulted in minor injuries to both drivers. High-speed accidents can be catastrophic, with both emergency personnel being killed and injured as well as innocent drivers. Police, fire, and ambulance drivers spend a…

A Bibb County woman has died after she was involved in a car crash. Although this fatal car crash involved just one vehicle, and we most often work with clients who have been in two-vehicle accidents, we thought it served as a sad and sobering reminder for all of us of how dangerous driving can be. The 25-year-old woman was traveling along Hartley Bridge Road early Sunday when she lost control of her vehicle near Arnold Drive. She then crashed her vehicle into a fence. Authorities put the time of the accident around 1 a.m. The woman was rushed to The Medical Center of Central Georgia after the accident, but it was too late and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. She was pronounced dead around 3:30 a.m. The woman leaves behind a 6-year-old son. As we said, fatal car crashes like this happen far too often, but…

The collapse of an I-5 bridge into the Skagit River in Washington reminds us, again, that our bridges are literally falling down around us. There are an estimated 66,000 structurally deficient across the country. In Georgia, there are 941, which ironically is quite good, placing the state 42nd in total number of structurally deficient bridges. But the news is not quite grounds for celebrating. There are three bridges in Georgia like the I-5 bridge that collapsed. They are functionally obsolete and fracture critical. This means they are well beyond their design thresholds for the number of vehicles they carry and the weight of those loads. This increases the risk of car accidents, which as the I-5 Bridge demonstrated, can bring the structure crashing down. The problem is many of these bridges were built as inexpensively as possible. They have no structural redundancies, so if a single girder or truss fails,…