It’s easy to assume that someone was driving recklessly when an accident happens on the road. More often than not, however, the biggest cause of car accidents is simple inattention on the part of the driver. Distracted driving is when the driver’s attention is diverted away from driving by any number of things. And with the number of ways to distract yourself always growing, the number of resulting accidents keeps rising.
A study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found that there were nearly 3,500 fatalities in distraction-based accidents in 2015, a 8.8% increase from 2014. That makes up nearly 10% of all car accident deaths that year. With both fatalities and injuries on the rise, distractions are one of the biggest concerns on the road.
There’s incredible risk in letting yourself get distracted behind the wheel. And if you’re in the other car and are the victim of an accident caused by a distracted driver, you may be able to file a personal injury lawsuit against the other driver if there is sufficient proof that their attention was elsewhere.