Speeding is one of the leading causes of car accidents, truck accidents, and motorcycle accidents. Higher speeds often cause severe or fatal injuries, especially if speeding trucks collide with motorcycles or cars.
Those injured in collisions often find themselves with mounting medical bills and no income because they can’t work while recovering. Some face life-long consequences, such as permanent disfigurement or disability, multiple surgeries, and a total lifestyle change because of their accident. All of these things can cause tremendous stress and frustration, which are detrimental to healing. Jason Stone and his team at Jason Stone Injury Lawyers want to help relieve some of that burden. We can handle your insurance claim for you so you can focus on recovering from your injuries. If you’re injured in a wreck, Better Phone Stone ®.
Why Is Speeding Dangerous?
Government entities carefully study road and traffic conditions to determine maximum safe driving speeds for specific sections of streets, roads, and interstates. Areas likely to have pedestrians have lower speed limits while drivers can travel much faster on interstates. Sharp curves also dictate slower speeds.
Driving over posted speed limits is illegal, and it is also dangerous. The faster a vehicle goes:
- The risk of collision increases.
- The more likely the vehicle is harder to control.
- Crash forces become exponentially greater.
- Faster driver reaction time is required.
- Collisions will probably cause more severe injuries and vehicle damage.
Drivers who speed often practice other dangerous behaviors as well, such as weaving through traffic. Speeding cars can swerve suddenly into a lane, making other vehicles need to brake suddenly and potentially causing a multiple-vehicle collision.
How Does Speeding Affect Stopping Distance?
When you’re driving, it can take almost a full second for you to notice a hazard, whether it’s debris in the road, an animal crossing, or the vehicles in front of you slowing down. Once you realize that you need to take corrective action, it takes up to another second to move your foot to the brake pedal. Only then will your car, truck, or motorcycle begin to slow down.
While two seconds doesn’t seem like much time, a car traveling at 60 mph goes 176 feet in two seconds. For comparison, that’s almost two-thirds of a football field that you travel before your vehicle begins to stop.
Speeding drivers typically don’t pay as much attention to road conditions as others, meaning that they might not see a hazard in front of them as soon as it appears. Unfortunately, this delayed reaction time causes many wrecks.
Trucks
When traveling at the same speed, a fully loaded semi-truck needs almost twice as much distance to come to a stop. These trucks can weigh up to 80,000 pounds, so they have more forward momentum than passenger vehicles. In addition, the air brakes on trucks don’t engage as quickly as car brakes do. A trucker traveling at 65 mph needs 525 feet to stop a fully loaded truck. This is almost twice the distance that a car or motorcycle needs. Trucks going over the speed limit take even longer to stop, increasing the risk of crashing. Car drivers sometimes merge into the lane that a truck is speeding in. Pulling in front of a speeding truck is very dangerous because of the time it takes trucks to stop. Even if a truck is speeding, you can contribute to causing an accident if you enter its path in some cases.
Motorcycles
Motorcycles don’t weigh nearly as much as cars or trucks. You’d think that motorcycles can stop much faster than cars because of this, but the truth is that cars and motorcycles take about the same distance. Sometimes, motorcycles need even more space than autos. Several factors determine braking distance for motorcycles:
- Abilities of the rider
- Brake efficiency
- Condition of suspension
- Road conditions
- Speed
- Tire condition
- Weight of rider and load or passengers
A bike traveling at 30 miles per hour needs about 45 feet to stop and approximately 245 feet at 70 mph. The speed is barely more than doubled, but the stopping distance increases by over five times. As you can see, speeding makes motorcyclists much more likely to crash. Unfortunately, riding gear doesn’t adequately protect bikers from injury.
Cars
The average car traveling at 70 mph needs approximately 348 feet to come to a stop. This includes the 103 feet the auto will traverse while the driver realizes they need to stop and begin braking. In comparison, cars only need 139 feet to stop when going 40 mph.
What Are Other Common Causes for Accidents?
Some form of human error causes the majority of vehicle accidents. All of these are worse when coupled with speeding.
Distracted Driving
You should focus on the road and be ready to react when you’re driving. Your hands should be on the steering wheel, and your eyes need to watch the road. Anything that takes your attention away from the act of driving is considered a distraction. Distractions can include:
- Looking at or talking to passengers
- Changing settings, such as climate control or audio volume
- Using your phone to text, email, or read
- Putting on makeup or fixing your hair
- Looking at the landscape or anything besides traffic
- Daydreaming
- Trying to find something in your vehicle
Driving Under the Influence of Drugs or Alcohol and Fatigued Driving
The physical effects of fatigue are similar to those of intoxication. Any of these conditions can adversely affect your ability to drive safely. You may experience impaired judgment, blurred vision, difficulty concentrating, and delayed reaction times.
Inclement Weather
Drivers often disregard the dangers of snow, ice, high winds, driving rain, hail, and fog. All of these situations limit vision, and some can cause slick road surfaces. It’s advisable to slow down during inclement weather, so speeding is particularly dangerous at these times.
Reckless Driving
When combined with speeding, driving recklessly shows a blatant disregard for the safety of everyone nearby. Road rage, rapid lane changes or merging, and racing are examples of reckless driving.
Can You Make a Claim for Damages After Your Accident?
Massachusetts law states that you can seek compensation if you are 50% or less responsible for causing your accident using modified comparative negligence. If you are eligible to receive compensation but are partially to blame for your crash, the total amount you can obtain is reduced accordingly.
For example, say that a speeding truck hits you from behind, but you had just pulled in front of it. You might not have taken into account the distance that trucks need to stop and didn’t give it enough space. You might be 20% at fault for the collision because of this, even though the truck driver was speeding. If total damages for the wreck are $100,000, you’re only eligible to receive $80,000 because the amount is reduced by 20%.
It’s crucial to prove that you weren’t responsible for causing your wreck, but doing so can be difficult on your own. Your speeding accident lawyer can help; we’ll also show that someone else is to blame, allowing you to seek damages from them.
Why Do You Need a Speeding Accident Lawyer?
Drivers who speed are guilty of negligence, which is a necessary component of personal injury claims. Even so, it’s often challenging to recover reasonable compensation if you sustain injuries in an accident involving speeding.
Insurance companies don’t want to pay damages for accidents. They’ll try to say that you’re not seriously injured or that you caused the collision to avoid paying compensation. Without legal representation, you’ll likely find it challenging to obtain enough money from them to cover the expenses caused by your accident, let alone for your pain and suffering.
Your speeding accident lawyer from Jason Stone Injury Lawyers will help you throughout your personal injury claim process. We will stand up for your rights against insurance companies.
Will You Let Jason Stone Injury Lawyers Represent You?
If you are an injured speeding accident victim, you deserve compensation. Hiring an attorney from Jason Stone Injury Lawyers as your speeding accident attorney has several benefits outlined in our Stone Cold Guarantee®.
We have represented clients in several kinds of personal injury claims since 2004, including car accidents, truck accidents, and motorcycle accidents. We want to put the knowledge gained through that experience to work for you. When you hire Jason Stone Injury Lawyers, everything we do on your behalf is in your best interests and focused on obtaining maximum compensation for you.
We understand what you’re experiencing, but you don’t have to face it alone. Begin by requesting your free case evaluation. There’s No Obligation, Just Information ®. We will tell you if you have a valid personal injury claim and give you options. Best of all, you don’t pay us until we win compensation for you. You’ll get our full support with no risk to you.
We have offices in Boston, Natick, Peabody, and Westwood. If you’d rather not come to us, we can arrange a video appointment. Call us today at (800) 577-5188. You can also reach us using live chat or submitting our online case evaluation form. Let us show you why so many people turn to Jason Stone Injury Lawyers for legal assistance.