Having worked in the field of personal injury law for many years, our legal staff has seen dozens of individuals hurt or maimed as a result of bad automobile, motorcycle or commercial trucking accidents. Some of the most heartbreaking cases involve fatal accidents. For the families who have lost a minor child due to a bad traffic collision, these are tragedies beyond description. Not only from the standpoint of preventability, but also because youngsters have their entire lives ahead of them, when a child is killed in a senseless roadway accident, the surviving family members can rarely find any solace in the aftermath of such a horrible event.
Here in the United States, traffic wrecks are sadly the most common cause of death for teens, amounting to more than 30 percent of the fatal accidents that take the lives of these young people every year. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) has stated that in 2010, car crashes killed seven teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19 every single day of that year. In fact, based on the latest data, 2,700 teens died in motor vehicle accidents in 2010, and we can only assume that the figures will remain about the same for the current year coming up.
This is truly sad, because as we said, many car and trucking-related highway accidents could probably be prevented if only drivers were more aware of their surroundings and of traffic patterns, and certainly if distractions in the passenger compartment could be reduced in some meaningful way. From an economic point of view, costs due to injuries from the accidents that affect young people (those individuals who are age 15 through 24) top nearly $20 billion annually.