One in every five crash fatalities involves a vehicle leaving the roadway to slam into a fixed object such as a tree, highway barrier, or signpost. Our Lake Jackson personal injury attorneys at Denena Points, PC emphasize that all of these crashes are preventable, and the insurance industry that pays for the costs of these accidents would like to find ways to ensure that more of these fatal crashes areprevented.
So the IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety) recently conducted an in-depth study of fixed object crashes using the national FARS (Fatality Analysis Reporting System) data. The IIHS studydetermined that 7,800 of the around 35,000 U.S. accident fatalities in 2009 resulted from crashes with fixed objects.
That number stood at 10% less than in the year before and at 26% less than in 1979, when the agency first began tabulating that data. The total percentage of fixed object crash fatalities in the U.S. has remained fairly constant since 1979, hovering between 19% and 23% each year.
About half of all fatal fixed object crashes happen at night, when drivers experience lower visibility. Excessive alcohol is frequently a contributor to that lowered nighttime visual acuity. Our Lake Jackson personal injury attorneys note that 45% of drivers who lose their lives in fatal fixed objects crashes are intoxicated at the time of the wreck. But only 29% of the drivers killed in other types of accidents are intoxicated.