AAA study reveals the habits of millennial drivers
A study released by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety suggests that millennial drivers in Georgia and around the country often act recklessly while behind the wheel. In the late summer of 2016, researchers polled 2,511 drivers of all ages about their driving habits and views, and they discovered that millennials frequently exceed posted speed limits, read or send email or text messages while driving and ignore red lights.
The AAA study indicates that millennial drivers are almost twice as likely to text while driving, and more than half of them admitted to recently running a red light. While only 5 percent of the drivers surveyed said that speeding in a school zone was acceptable, this figure doubled when millennials were asked the same question. Overall, 88 percent of the drivers between the ages of 19 and 24 admitted to engaging in dangerous behavior while behind the wheel during the previous 30 days.
A press release from the National Safety Council published on the same day as the AAA study shows the human costs associated with this kind of reckless behavior. The NSC reported that motor vehicle accident fatalities in the United States in 2016 exceeded 40,000 for the first time since 2007. The number killed on America’s roads increased sharply in both 2015 and 2016 after years of improvement, and the safety advocacy organization says that this two-year surge in traffic accident fatalities is the largest it has observed in more than 50 years.
Human error is a factor in most automobile collisions, but establishing liability in car accident lawsuits can be challenging when police have filed no charges and accident investigations are inconclusive. In these situations, personal injury attorneys may conduct their own inquiries. Attorneys or their investigators could visit accident scenes to canvass the area for security cameras and witnesses that the police may have overlooked, and they may also check cellphone records for evidence of distracted driving.
Source: The National Safety Council, “Motor Vehicle Deaths in 2016 Estimated to be Highest in Nine Years”, Feb. 15, 2017