Strategies for Safer Highways and Avoidance of Auto Collisions
How to avoid auto collision accidents
All across the United States, particularly populated state
and counties, roadside crashes are frequent incidences. The yearly toll is
quite staggering. In an approximation of statistics regarding yearly crashes,
about 15,000 individuals are killed, and an additional 1,000,000 are injured.
Meanwhile, the society is burdened down with the expenses of every crash that
occurs, amounting to $150 billion, every year.
Most of the auto accidents happen for a number of reasons:
-
driver error / carelessness
-
medical emergency
-
vehicle defects / malfunctions
-
roadway deficiency
-
weather conditions
Many accidents are often the result of a combination of
these factors.
Through the years, many organizations in the country have
made conscious efforts dedicated to finding solutions for these accident
causes. They have also maintained steady programs that are geared towards
improving safety along every roadway.
The organizations that led in these efforts are:
-
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
-
American Association of State Highway and
Transportation (AASHTO)
-
Federal Highway Administrations (FHWA)
-
Transportation Research Board
-
Roadway Safety Foundation
-
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS)
However, despite dedicated efforts shed by these
organizations, the accidents in highways and roadsides continue to become
considerable and maintain its status as a recurrent problem in the county.
Sometimes the improvements made for highway safety face
varying conditions and then paves the way for new risks and dangers in the
roads for motorists and drivers.
Lately, the top safety organizations concentrated on highway
accidents preventions and security has merged their efforts to address the
ongoing difficulties created by accidents in the roadsides. They developed a
plan to strategically deal with the dangers and risks recurrent in the nation's
highways.
The agencies worked together and attempted to establish a
comprehensive roadway safety solution based on their shared visions of highly
secure roadways. Their specific objective is to promote an organized highway
system wherein "drivers
rarely leave the road; but when they do, the vehicle and the roadside work
together to protect vehicle occupants and pedestrians from serious harm".
Some particular goals that support this purpose are added to
the goals being maintained by current roadway safety approaches, which are:
- Keeping
vehicles on the roadways
- Removing,
seeking remedies and/or shielding vehicles that leave the roadway from
existing roadside hazards
- Minimizing
injuries to the vehicles' passengers that crash into the roadside hazards
To achieve the vision mentioned, the improved plan
identified five missions, which will focus on various successive efforts that
would necessitate the safety improvement in the country's roadsides.
"The five missions are:
Mission 1 - Increase the awareness of roadside
safety and support for it
Mission 2 - Build and maintain information resources
and analysis procedures to support continued improvement of roadside safety
Mission 3 - Keep vehicles from leaving the roadway
Mission 4 - Keep vehicles from overturning or
striking objects on the roadside when they do leave the roadway
Mission 5 - Minimize injuries and fatalities when
overturns occur or objects are stuck in the roadside. "
The entire plan can be read and studied from http://gulliver.trb.org/publications/nchrp/nchrp_w33.pdf
Further, the organizations that participated in realizing
these visions are pooling funds to maximize the usefulness of their plans. It
is being hoped that as the mission of these organizations continue, the
American society in the present and future will benefit much by experiencing a
sense of security and safety in the highways , becoming witness to decreasing
crashes and auto accidents along with the deaths and injuries that come along
with it.
Get more information on avoidance of automobile collisions
and other forms of motor vehicle related accidents in California through Auto
Collision lawyers at http://askaccidentlawyers.com/
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lala C. Ballatan a.k.a Kay Zetkin discovered the pleasure of writing through her daily journals way back when she was 10. With writing, she felt freedom – to express her viewpoints and assert it, to bring out all concerns -- imagined and observed, to bear witness.
|