So far, this summer alone, more than three people a day died, on average, in car accidents in New York and New Jersey with a total of 48 people injured.
And, those killed in motor vehicle accidents to date this summer in two of the most densely populated regions of the country, included 597 drivers, 203 passengers, 296 pedestrians and 57 bicyclists, according to data compiled by the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles and the NJ Department of Transportation.
“Car accidents are happening in the New York and New Jersey metro areas at an alarming rate,” said Jay W. Dankner, Managing Partner of the top midtown Manhattan-based car accident injury law firm of Dankner Milstein, P.C. Dankner Milstein also has offices in New Jersey and Long Island, NY.
And the numbers of auto accident-related injuries and deaths don’t get much better outside of big metro centers like New York and New Jersey either. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration across the country reported recently that literally thousands of people suffered personal injuries so far this summer with more than 80 people killed in car crashes every day.
In the United States, 32,367 people were killed in 2019 in an estimated 5,338,000 police-reported traffic crashes, 2,217,000 people were injured, and 3,778,000 crashes resulted in some degree of property damage.
In New Jersey alone, there were 553 fatal collisions that resulted in 589 deaths in 2018 the latest year for which data has been gathered for a 12-month period. There were 30 hit-and-run fatal crashes involving 67 vehicles in New Jersey in 2018. And an average of 1 to 2 car accident deaths occurred in New Jersey each day of 2018.
According to the NHTSA, speeding remains the # 1 contributing factor accounting for 30 percent of all fatal crashes in the U.S.A – a total of 9,944 lives were lost in speeding-related crashes in 2018. The annual economic cost to society of speeding-related crashes is estimated as $40.4 billion.
The number of speed-related crashes in New York was 28,147 in 2018, causing 319 fatalities and 18,843 personal injuries. Unsafe speed contributed to 98 fatal car accidents in New Jersey last year.
Intoxicated or impaired drivers – registering a BAC of 0.08 percent or higher – caused 9,878 fatalities in the U.S. in 2018, accounting for a total of 31 percent of traffic fatalities for the year. One hundred and eighty-one of the drunk driving fatalities were children, including 25 who were pedestrians or pedal cyclists struck by drunk drivers.
In New York, 8,461 crashes were reported last year as alcohol-related resulting in 362 deaths and 6,121 personal injuries
In New Jersey, 193 people were killed in car crashes in 2018 in which a driver registered a BAC of 0.08 percent or higher. And an estimated 387,000 more were injured in motor vehicle crashes involving distracted drivers throughout the U.S.
Approximately two-thirds (66 percent) of all drivers in the U.S. say they use a cell phone while driving; nearly one-third (33 percent) use a cell phone behind the wheel routinely. About one-eighth (12.5 percent) of all drivers reported texting while driving.
Cell phone use was blamed in 3,383 crashes in New Jersey in 2018: 1,838 wrecks involving hand-held phones injured 896 people and killed 6 people, and 1,545 crashes involving hands-free phones resulted in 586 people injured and 3 dead, according to the NJ Department of Transportation.
“In addition to driving more carefully and fully concentrating on the road and environments, accident avoidance or mitigation programs must be instituted by states, cities and municipalities to reduce this shocking statistics”, said Mr. Dankner.
For more information, or if you have been in an auto accident and are injured contact the top New York auto accident injury law firm of Dankner Milstein, P.C. by calling 212-751-8000. Or you can E-mail one of the firm’s lawyers for a free consultation.
