Maryland Injury Attorney Blog

It’s become a tragic and all-too-familiar news story: A driver involved in a fatal car accident was found to be texting or talking on a cell phone right before the deadly crash occurred.

Often the driver is a teenager, an inexperienced youth operator just learning the rules of the road. However studies have shown that adults can be just as guilty of texting while driving as their teenagers. And while the problem of texting and driving may have overshadowed using cell phones while driving, the latter remains a serious traffic safety concern on par with drunk driving.

The U.S. Department of Transportation declared April as National Distracted Driving Awareness month. With good reason.

If you grew up in my generation, going for a Sunday drive along Maryland back roads was a leisurely family pastime. We kids piled in the back of the sedan or station wagon, with dad at the wheel and mom riding shotgun. Life was a lot simpler in those days.

Looking back, it’s a wonder more of us weren’t injured or killed in Maryland car accidents. We had none of today’s driving laws or vehicle safety equipment in place. No child or infant car seats, no air bags, no anti-lock brakes, and no cell phones if you did run into trouble. The cars may have had seat belts, but we weren’t required by law to wear them. When it comes to traffic safety and preventing auto crashes in Maryland, we’ve come a long way since we were kids.

Thanks to adoption of traffic safety laws, public awareness campaigns, and vehicle improvements, national motor vehicle death rates are back down to the 1961 level. The U.S. Census reports that in 2009, a total 33,808 persons were killed in motor vehicle accidents in this country. That’s as low as it’s been since the early 1960s. Maryland had 547 traffic deaths in 2009. Still, every one of these Maryland traffic crash deaths means someone’s life was cut short. A family was left grieving.

Though Baltimore County commuters might beg to differ, Maryland has recently been ranked as one of the safer states in the country for motorists. (See related Maryland Injury Attorney articles below.) Now a new study released by a national highway traffic safety advocacy group ranks Maryland among states given a “green light” for basic traffic laws on the books.

However many aspects of Maryland traffic laws and regulations could use improvement, as the study authors — and experienced Baltimore County car accident injury lawyers — would agree. Let’s take a brief look at the study findings and recommendations.

Maryland’s basic traffic laws were given “green light” passing grades by the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. The group is comprised of consumer, insurance, health, safety, and law enforcement representatives and conducts a national survey of traffic laws by state every year. Its report titled 2012 Roadmap to State Highway Safety Laws looks at 15 basic traffic laws covering a range of safety areas, including use of motorcycle helmets and seat belts, texting while driving, Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL) programs, child safety seats, and ignition interlock devices for convicted drunk drivers.

As a new year begins, it’s worth noting some traffic accident statistics and trends for the state of Maryland. There’s some encouraging news, but many Md. traffic safety and driving challenges remain.

A recent story reported by CBS Baltimore noted that Maryland traffic accident fatalities decreased by 10 percent last year. The report pointed to statistics for 2010 released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). According to NHTSA’s findings, 493 motor vehicle crash deaths occurred in Maryland in 2010, compared with 549 in 2009.

A source from the Mid-Atlantic AAA reported that the decrease in Maryland car crash deaths can be credited to a number of factors. These include advances in automotive safety equipment such as air bags and anti-rollover technology, better road signage, as well as public safety campaigns targeting unsafe driving behaviors, including drunk driving in Maryland.

Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) made a bold recommendation — one that urges states to take another look at their driving laws and has the driving public talking about individual rights versus public safety.

In the wake of several fatal distracted driving traffic accidents, the NTSB proposed an all-out, nationwide ban on talking and texting on cell phones while driving. That would mean no talking on either hand-held or hands-free cell phones and no texting, for any drivers of any age, except in the case of an emergency.

The NTSB recommendation came following examination of a 2010 case in Missouri, where a young man who had reportedly been texting for several minutes crashed his pickup truck into a commercial truck that had slowed down for road construction — setting in motion a chain reaction crash that involved two school buses. The pickup truck driver and a teenage passenger on one of the buses were killed, and close to 40 people were injured, some seriously.