While driving recently, you slammed on your brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of you. Fortunately, a car accident did not occurred and no one was hurt. However, such near misses are instructional, because they reveal underlying attention-related problems or bad habits behind the wheel putting you at risk for a serious crash in the future. Continue reading “What You Can Learn from Your Recent Close Call — How “Near Misses” Can Prevent Car Accidents” →

Perhaps a careless teenager texting on her cellphone veered into your lane, clipping your car; or maybe a pickup truck soared through an intersection and t-boned you, totaling your car and hurting your passengers. In either case, in addition to obtaining fair compensation, you want to prevent similar accidents in the future. Continue reading “Keeping a Driving Journal to Reduce Your Likelihood of Getting into Another Car Accident” →

Sure, we’ve all heard the complaints about female drivers. And how many of the jokes deride women for driving causing car accidents. Maybe some of us have even gone so far as to repeat one or more of the jokes ourselves. Here’s a sample one-liner that just about sums up the topic: “We bumped into some old friends yesterday – my wife was driving.” Continue reading “What’s that about women drivers? Better think again!” →

Autonomous vehicles are coming, there’s no getting around that.  But there may be some wrinkles – actually bumps in the road would be a better term – before human driving becomes a thing of the past. Continue reading “Google’s driverless cars – not foolproof!” →

Let’s say you’ve been in a fender-bender.  Nothing serious, just some damage to your car and the car of the guy who just hit you at an intersection.  Of course, there is that slight pain you feel in the back of your neck, but that’s probably from the way you slept last night, nothing to do with the crash – or so you think!  All in all, you’re not concerned about this incident costing you any money. Continue reading “Minor car accidents can lead to major expenses” →

Try as we might, it is impossible to eliminate entirely the risk of getting into a car accident.  No matter how careful you are, no matter how well you practice defensive driving, there are circumstances, like having your vehicle struck from behind while stopped at a traffic light, that are simply beyond your control.  On the other hand, if the goal is to cut down the chances of getting into a car crash, there are steps all of us can take to increase the safety factor when we drive.  Consumer Reports tells us that they’ve identified a half dozen tips that will make your driving safer, and that will make it less likely that you’ll be one of the unfortunate people who will be involved in a collision.  Here’s what they have to say: Continue reading “How to avoid car accidents” →

A jury in the small, upstate New York town of Bainbridge has awarded the plaintiffs damages in the sum of $150 million for the loss of their 4-year old son in a 2012 car accident.  The youngster was being driven to a sports lesson when the 1999 Jeep Cherokee in which he was a passenger was hit from behind by a pickup truck.  Interestingly, the driver of the truck was, according to the jury, liable for only 1% of the damages.  The real culprit, they found, was the design of the Chrysler-manufactured Jeep Cherokee. Continue reading “Chrysler hit with $150 million in damages for car crash” →

Representative Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Republican Party’s candidate for Vice President in 2012, is being sued by a couple of Washington, D.C. men for injuries they say were sustained in a car accident last year.  The men, who are plaintiffs in the pending lawsuit, state that Ryan’s Chief of Staff, Kevin Seifert, was driving Ryan’s car in an unsafe manner, when it rear-ended their vehicle. Continue reading “Paul Ryan sued for injuries in D.C. car crash” →