Remember all those horrifying stories and photos your driver’s ed teacher presented in class in an effort to frighten you into obeying all the traffic rules and driving wisely? Well, you might think that they were exaggerating, but guess what? They weren’t. Perhaps if you knew some of the real numbers coming in from the streets every day you would realize that the fear you had as a wide-eyed teenager in that driver’s ed class was not only well-founded, but completely reasonable.
An average of 43,000 people die every year in the United States in car crashes, which means that 115 people die every day in car crashes. That number doesn’t take into account crashes that result in injuries or where victims walk away unharmed but their cars receive some sort of damage. That number is much, much higher, totaling around 6,420,000 a year.
Despite these disturbing numbers, many people still suffer from the “It Won’t Happen to Me” syndrome; this is to their detriment. Even if you are lucky enough to skirt total disaster in your vehicle, the average person today still has a 1 in 16 chance to be in some sort of accident during their lifetime, and that risk increases with every additional minute spent on the road. Americans spend an average of 100 hours a year just commuting to work, so after adding any other hours spent driving around the neighborhood, running errands, going on vacation, dropping kids off, etc., you’re looking at a lot of time you spend exposed to the dangers of the road, no matter how safely you drive.
However, one thing they probably didn’t cover in driver’s ed was the many legal protections available to you if you do get into a car crash, whether it’s your fault or not. Knowing and trusting an experienced personal injury firm, like the auto accident attorneys in Salt Lake City, is a must to avoid getting extorted for thousands of dollars or, likewise, to be able to get the money you do need from the party at fault if you suffer injury in an accident. Knowing that you have such trusted professionals to take care of you in the likely case of an accident, whenever it does happen, can make the risk of driving a lot more manageable.
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