New Jersey Accident and Injury Law Blog : New Jersey Injury Lawyer & Attorney : The Grossman Law Firm : Serving Monmouth County, Bergen County

A new law will require all occupants of a vehicle in New Jersey to buckle up. As a New Jersey auto accident lawyer, I am pleased with the law which is the latest one in a series designed to protect New Jersey motorists in the event of accidents. However, it would have been even more encouraging if the law had been signed in with primary enforcement. Currently, the bill comes with secondary enforcement, which means that police must first stop the vehicle for another offense, before handing out a ticket for failure to buckle up.

Rear seat passengers are at a grave risk of injury not just to themselves, but also other passengers in the event of accidents. The impact of an accident can throw back seat passengers against the other occupants of the vehicle, causing them serious injuries, not to mention the injuries to the rear seat passenger themselves.

As a New Jersey car accident lawyer, I would like to see buckling up become a habit for all motor vehicle occupants. You can’t overestimate the kind of protection being in a properly fitted seatbelt can offer during an accident. Along with airbags, seatbelts have been responsible for saving thousand of lives over the years. However, back seat passengers have traditionally had a much lower rate of buckling up than drivers or front seat passengers. This places them at a higher risk of injuries.  Hopefully, this new law will help make buckling up in the backseat as common and widespread as wearing seatbelts in the front seat.

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Automobile accident fatalities around the country, including in New Jersey are on their way to "significant" lows, a survey shows. In at least 40 states out of the 44 surveyed, the decline in the numbers of  accident related deaths  is up to 10.7 percent on an average.

According to the Governor's Highway Safety Association, the declines can be traced to a widespread use of seatbelts. The practice of buckling up in 2008 stood at close to 83 per cent of the driving population, and this has contributed to large number of lives being saved in automobile crashes. There has also been an increase in efforts made towards traffic safety enforcement. The state with the largest reduction in fatalities was Massachusetts with a 29 percent drop , followed by Wisconsin, Alaska, Hawaii, Virginia and the District of Columbia  where these rates dropped by 20 percent. New Jersey fared well on the list too, with an 18 percent drop in accident fatalities in 2008. Georgia was the other state that saw a double digit drop in accident fatalities with a 12 per cent decline.

Other interesting factors have been cited by the GHSA as contributing to this welcome drop in fatalities. Drivers it appears, are driving slower in an attempt to save on fuel. This means that major-impact crashes that occur at high speeds and very often result in fatalities, have been markedly reduced. Expect safety enforcement programs across various states to use this "fuel efficiency" carrot to encourage drivers to slow down.

The results of the GHSA survey seem to mirror findings from other agencies that have pointed to a drop in fatalities. The Department of Transportation has estimated that the accident death rate for 2008 has dropped substantially. . Of course, these lowered accident rates seem to be coinciding with a slow economy, as well as the gas price crisis last summer, which may explain the drop to large extent. With a meltdown in full swing,, people are less inclined to drive unless absolutely necessary, which has meant fewer people on the roads. We'll have to wait a couple of years to see if these statistics change dramatically once the economy gets back to normal, and people begin their usual driving habits again.

Bergen County Car Accident Lawyers

At the Law Offices of Scott Grossman, our Bergen county car accident lawyers constantly represent victims of automobile accidents. If you have suffered an injury in an accident, contact a Bergen County car accident lawyer at the firm to discuss your options for compensation.

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