Traffic Deaths Surge

You can readily see the lawyer media advertisers use every type of gimmick to solicit wrongful death and personal injury cases originating on the freeways and roads in Tennessee. In spite of hundreds of millions of dollars doled out to each state by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) each year to promote driver safety the death toll continues to rise.

The 2019 figures are no exception. Tennessee’s number of fatalities on the highways was 1,129 compared to 1,039 in 2018, 1024 in 2017 and 1,037 in 2016. Hamilton County faced no better with 57 deaths on our highways and streets. This is a substantial increase from the 43 lives lost in 2018 and 27 in 2017.

In spite of the tremendous sums of taxpayer money given to the states for speeding, sobriety checkpoints, hands on the wheel, seat belt requirements and no texting initiatives, the numbers continue to rise.

What is the answer to stopping this carnage on our highways?

Unfortunately, there is no easy answer. In addition to the safety factor there is the financial and political aspects to these tactics. Politicians love to express their hard nosed stands against drunk drivers, special interest groups who solicit the Governors Highway Council for their share of the money, municipalities continue to encourage more arrests with “unspoken quota” requirements and more and more heavy trucks continue to ramble down the roads with their thousands of pounds of rolling death on our now outdated freeway systems which began in 1954.

All of these and other new innovations such as the legalization of marijuana will continue to escalate these death and injury statistics. With many families now having 2-3 more vehicles, the overcrowding and danger on our thoroughfares will continue.

Perhaps everything is just cycler as some safety experts believe but the safety enforcement efforts will continue because of all of the reasons cited herein and others.