The holidays are here. More people are on the road and that means more accidents. We cover some of the safe holiday driving tips to try to help our San Antonio neighbors avoid crashes and make sure everyone stays safe on the Texas roadways.
Transcript:
Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real, and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis.
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Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases podcast where we not only talk about what's going on at our firm, we also talk about ways to not need a law firm like mine, safety tips, how to live a safer life, how to drive safer, how to be safer on the roads and in your home and in the work. Today, we're talking about holiday driving. It's right around the corner and actually, Thanksgiving holiday is already behind us. If you drove then and you're fine now, good for you.
We're glad you were able to drive safely. As the Christmas holidays approach, we hope you also drive safely. The CDC, we all know a lot about CDC now that we have lived through this pandemic, but they also do injury prevention and control and they've released some tips for holiday safe driving. They also started by pointing out that it looks like 2020, we'll see a 7% increase in deaths, roadway fatalities which is surprising to everybody because actually, there were less miles and time driven by people in 2020.
In 2019, they said there was about 36,000 people killed in crashes. I expect it to be closer to 39 in 2020. Even less people on the road has not led to less traffic fatalities. Be careful out there. San Antonio has a lot of roads, a lot of people on the roads, and the holidays just make for even more traffic. Some safety tips they recommend for everybody to follow.
Number one is, the real obvious one, is do not drive when you are impaired. In 2019, alcohol-impaired driving was part of- or contributed to over 10,000 crashes in the United States. That's not just alcohol, drugs, marijuana. If you're on medication in which you shouldn't drive, don't drive, call a taxi, call an Uber, have a friend drive. Number one tip that we've been hearing our whole lives. Remember it and plan ahead.
Also, distractions. That's the new thing that's leading to a lot of crashes that we see here at our law firm, a lot of people in San Antonio. If you're just driving around or sitting on the phone, one of the things the CDC points out that- if you are receiving a text message and reading it, driving at 55, that you are likely keeping your eyes off the road for almost the distance of a football field.
Five seconds not looking at the road is almost the length of a football field at 55 miles an hour. Just remember, put your phone down, pull over if you need to use your phone. Also, check the weather. Us in San Antonio saw one of the worst traffic backups mass casualty events. It's probably the worst that I've ever seen or heard of was the Fort Worth pile-up last year with the ice on the road.
I have hit ice in Fort Worth before. It is a very scary thing to hit that unexpectedly. Check the road safety tips, check the weather on the road. Make sure before you head out, you got a plan. Make sure you know what to do. If you do hit bad weather, get a hotel, stay the night, try to avoid it. Some child passenger safety tips they recommend. Make sure your kids are in the age-appropriate seatings whether it's a car seat or a booster seat, make sure the seat belts fit them properly.
There's a lot of analysis that goes into properly restraining a child in a vehicle. Make sure you're up on that and make sure you've got the right booster or car seat. Make sure you take off their puffy, bulky coats and things like that before you strap them in because that can limit the effectiveness of a car seat or a booster seat or seatbelt. Remember, children under 12 should be in the backseat of the vehicle.
You yourself can make a good example by letting them know that every time they get in the vehicle that they need to put on their seatbelt and they need to be safe as they drive. If you have teens that are driving now, make sure you share all of this with them. Make sure they understand the dangers of texting and driving. Make sure they understand the dangers of impaired driving.
Make sure that they're aware of the laws. Every state has different laws. Make sure your kids understand what the current laws are. I think I looked recently, the laws for teenage drivers in Texas is much different than it was whenever I was a young guy learning to drive. Now, there's limitations on who can be in the car with you, hours of driving, and things like that that did not exist when I was getting my driver's license, at least to the extent.
I was aware then and I'm aware now, I don't think any of those things existed. Then from the everybody driving standpoint, this is maybe a good time just to remember, make sure that you yourself have all of your licensing current, and make sure you've had your eyes checked, and make sure that you understand the dangers of where you will be driving. If you're going up north for the holidays and you are not used to driving in snow and ice, remember that and don't think that you're going to figure it out on your first try.
We hope everybody has a happy holiday. We hope everybody's very safe on the road. Remember to plan ahead. Remember to put down your phone and not drive if you're impaired. If everybody does this, this can be one of the safest holidays in recent memory. We hope it is. Everybody have a happy holiday and we'll talk to you next time.
