Some experts question their safety

Uber has been available in Pittsburg for two years, and this week the company is unveiling driverless taxis to journalists and soon to the public. Some safety experts are concerned about the sophistication, or lack thereof, of the technology and the use of average people to test them.

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is proposing a mandate to Congress, requiring automakers to equip all new passenger vehicles with rearview cameras by 2014. The cameras primary benefit would be to reduce the fatal car accidents involving vehicles backing over pedestrians, most often children. The mandate, first proposed in 2010, has been discussed by numerous safety groups as the best way to combat a common, and tragic, form of accident. This is one of the first measures proposed by the NHTSA designed to protect pedestrians from motor vehicles. If you have been involved in a pedestrian-related accident, contact our Chicago pedestrian accident lawyers today.

Nearly half of all backover fatalities involve children under the age of 5. Roughly two-thirds of those accidents involve a parent or close relative driving over the child. Few accidents are as horrifying and heart-wrenching as those involving the so-called “bye-bye syndrome” where children hurry out to wave goodbye to a parent and the parent does not see them. A non-profit group organized to improve safety for children in and around cars was a major proponent of the proposed legislations.

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Safety measures that parents insist upon for their own children may be ignored when carpooling responsibilities place multiple children in the vehicle. Research has shown that parents are more likely to expose children to injury in a car accident if they are carpooling. Properly securing more than one child in a vehicle can be time-consuming, or even impossible, depending on the vehicle. If you are driving other children, or if you are letting your children ride with another parent, it is important to make sure that all precautions are taken to protect those children from harm.

Infants and toddlers suffer a much higher rate of fatal injury in car accidents when they are not properly placed in child safety seats. Older children who are too big for car seats but too small for regular seat belts need booster seats to prevent them from sliding under the seat belt or suffering head or neck injuries from the belt itself. Most states have laws requiring such booster seats, but they are still underused in most places. All children less than 4 feet 9 inches tall need a booster seat to ride safely in a car. All children under the age of 13 should be placed in the back seat.

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Roughly 80 people die each year from drunk driver car accidents on New Year’s Day, as reported by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. That figure illustrates a 150 percent increase in the chances of one dying in an alcohol-related crash when comparing it to an average day this time of year.

What is even more startling is that experts predict these numbers to be even higher during the upcoming New Year’s 2011 celebration, because the holiday falls on a Saturday. While Chicago already experiences a serious drunk driving epidemic, the problem will dramatically spike during this weekend’s festivities.

The post Chances of Dying from Drunk Driver up 150 Percent on New Year’s appeared first on North Chicago & St. Louis Injury Updates.

A school-bus accident on Monday morning sent 13 children to the hospital and the driver to the Peoria County Jail.

The bus was shuttling 20 children to a Peoria district school when it jumped a curb and stopped in a residential driveway, striking two vehicles in the process. Bus driver Gary Stewart, 46, was arrested and booked for DUI after testing showed a blood-alcohol content of .04 percent. While that would typically be under Illinois’ legal limit of .08, for a commercial school-bus driver the limit is .04, which Stewart allegedly exceeded.

The post School-Bus Crash Injures Children: Leads to DUI Charges appeared first on North Chicago & St. Louis Injury Updates.