Macon Personal Injury Blog

Today's commercial truck drivers face long hours, often logging as many as 70 hours over an eight-day stretch. The difficult, solitary nature of the profession is leading some to turn to alcohol or drugs. Sometimes, semitruck drivers abuse substances simply because they are bored and tired of spending so much time alone, while in other instances, they do so in an attempt to stay awake longer and get more miles under their belts.

Regardless of their reasoning for using alcohol or drugs, the American Addiction Centers report that abuse of both can have catastrophic effects. Given how pronounced the dangers of drinking and driving, or using drugs and driving, are for the average motorist, you can imagine that they typically magnify when the people abusing drugs and alcohol are also sitting at the controls of massive semitrucks. So, just how pervasive is the substance-abusing trucker problem?

A Georgia lawmaker has proposed banning all drivers from talking on handheld phones, but this may not address the larger issue of cognitive distraction.

In recent years, distracted driving has become a serious public safety threat. Distraction.gov reports that distraction-related crashes resulted in about 421,000 injuries and 3,328 fatalities in 2012 alone. Cellphones are a common cause of driver distraction, as many people in Macon know. For this reason, texting while driving is illegal in Georgia, and novice and bus drivers cannot use handheld phones. Still, state law does not address handheld phone use among other drivers.

Most drivers throughout Georgia have adjusted to seeing children walking to and from school by now. However, with the weather rapidly beginning to change, your children may be more at risk of pedestrian accidents in the winter months than they were when school began in September.

An accident that occurred on September 6 in Clayton County shows how suddenly and unexpectedly a child can be hit by a car. WSBTV News reported that a 13-year-old girl was walking in the afternoon when a vehicle struck her, resulting in critical injuries. It was unknown whether she was walking home from school, but as you are aware, the time of the accident would coincide with many children's after-school schedules.

When is a sneeze more than a sneeze? Answer: When it causes an accident on Georgia roads.

a fit of sneezing was the alleged cause of an auto accident between a woman driving an SUV and the driver of a minivan.