Car accidents – are we still safe on the roads?

The rain is lashing on your windscreen and flashes of lightning surround you. Rain obscures the motorway in front of you and the only sight you can discern is the fog lights of other vehicles.

You squint and strain your eyes before, BANG, another car ploughs into your rear. Tyres skid off tarmac and plummet into a ditch, and you hold onto your steering wheel tight and don’t let go.

These are the fears swirling around every drivers’ head – and for the unfortunate few, they become a reality.

In the year ending June 2014, there were 24,580 killed or seriously injured casualties on roads across the UK. In the case of a number of these car accidents, the injured party isn’t to blame.

Indeed, becoming injured in a car accident won’t just cause pain. With severe whiplash or broken bones, you could be out of action for weeks. Just imagine the pay cheques you’ll miss when you’re consigned to a hospital bed.

Yet, unless you do something about it, you will be out of pocket. That’s when you give the injury claim lawyers a call.

Hire the right team of lawyers and they’ll be like bloodhounds for your case, tracking down any evidence of accountability, detailing witness accounts and finding proof (such as CCTV footage) that will make your case for a claim rock solid.

In addition to financial recompense we as law abiding citizens like to see justice done. So for cases where reckless drivers speed with abandon, ram other vehicles off-road and cause havoc on highways, we rely on the courts to hold the perpetrators to account – and recognise their impact on the victims.

Car accidents are primarily the fault of poor driving, even in its most mundane and basic forms. Driving too close to other vehicles, failing to look before you pull out of a junction, head-on collisions after you tried to speed through a red light – these are all more dangerous than people think.

OutRAGEous driving

Part of the issue lies in road rage, that affliction which turns perfectly reasonable individuals into demon drivers, the type of people you’d cross the street to avoid. As soon as the key turns in the ignition, genteel people transform into entitled nightmares.

To reduce accidents (something we’re failing to do in the UK – they increased by four per cent last year) a re-education is necessary.

You can already see those gears falling into place. Younger male drivers are given higher insurance premiums, anger management classes are doled out for traffic offences and stricter penalties are given for poor driving.

We’ll never live in an accident-free world, but we can continue to reduce their likelihood. Let’s hope the coming years see a reduction, not a proliferation, of car accidents.