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

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The parents of a teenager who was killed in a car accident in Southampton Township, Burlington County are channeling their grief into effecting real change in New Jersey law. They want legislation that will make it mandatory for drivers in fatal car accidents to undergo testing for alcohol and drugs.

In July 2007, seventeen-year-old Anthony Farrace was in a Mercedes Benz driven by his girlfriend, Danielle McLaughlin. She seems to have lost control of the car as she attempted to pass a big rig, crashing the Mercedes into a tree. Farrace died almost instantly. McLaughlin suffered injuries. Over the next few months, she pleaded guilty for charges of careless driving, and ended up paying a fine of $200 dollars and having her license suspended for about six months.   Anthony’s parents John and Claudia Farrace believe that McLaughlin should have been tested for alcohol and drug use. 

Under New Jersey law, a person in an accident may be tested under two conditions:

• He or she must agree to be tested.
• Police must furnish a search warrant to test for alcohol and drugs. To obtain a search warrant, officers must have evidence or reasonable suspicion that the motorist is intoxicated.  For instance, the smell of alcohol on a person’s breath, slurred speech, or disoriented or incoherent behavior could qualify as reasonable suspicion.

The Farraces are pushing for Bill 3838 introduced by Assemblymen Nelson Albano (D Cumberland) and Paul Moriarty (D Gloucester). The bill will mandate drug and alcohol testing for motorists in all fatal accidents. The legislation also has its critics, including those who believe that the law violates the Fourth amendment. Moriarty doesn’t agree. According to him, a person could always refuse to take a drug or alcohol test, and be slapped with license suspension for at least seven months.

Motor vehicle accidents are the number one cause of death for teenagers across the country. It's an incredible waste of potential and promise when a teenager loses his or her life due to reckless or negligent driving, and we seem to be seeing more of these crashes.  I recently read a post about teen accidents in Georgia by Atlanta personal injury lawyer Lisa Seigel of the Katz Law Firm. It includes a letter written by a coroner who speaks of his sadness at the number of dead teens he has seen in his job over the last few years.

As the post points, our law enforcement officers and Monmouth County personal injury lawyers can only do so much to grapple with the problem of teen car accidents. Parents must play a bigger role in promoting safe driving practices in their teenagers.

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Stricter enforcement, enhanced auto safety features, and of course, the fact that high gasoline prices made sure most people thought twice about making that not-so-necessary trip – these were the reasons the rate of road accident deaths in New Jersey, from Passaic County to Ocean County and beyond, fell to their lowest in over a decade.

The numbers were particularly encouraging in Ocean County, where the number of deaths from road accidents fell by almost 50 percent to 36 in 2008. In 2007 year, a total of 74 people had died in traffic accidents in the county. That's s a significant drop, and one that has as much to do with better monitoring by our law enforcement agencies, as it has to do with high gasoline prices. In our very own Monmouth County, the drop hasn’t been very steep – from 55 in 2007 to 48 in 2008. Worse yet, Monmouth County was second on the list of auto fatalities in 2008 in the state.

Taken countywise, law enforcement officials say, these statistics don't mean much since the rate could vary from year to year for each county, and not be that significant in the overall scheme of things, but when you consider that there has been the biggest ever drop in the past thirteen years in the total number of deaths from traffic accidents in New Jersey overall, then that is a significant development. The death rate in 2008 was 597 for the entire state, compared to data from the past thirteen years, which show a death rate that’s constantly above 700.

Nobody's saying that we should all cheer because we had 597 New Jerseyans die on our roads last year, but if we look clear and hard at some of the programs our enforcement agencies managed to implement last year, and see how much these had to do with reducing the death rate so dramatically, then we may find ways to see such similar decreases in 2009, and beyond. It appears that better seat belt enforcement and anti-drunk driving measures played a big part in law enforcement programs in 2008, and these seem to have paid off richly in terms of lives saved.

All in all, whatever else is happening in the rest of the state, Monmouth County needs to get its act together. Since 2002, the county has constantly ranked among the top three counties, for accident related deaths. One reason why Monmouth County accident lawyers are as busy as they are, but definitely a trend we need to see moving in the other direction.  

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 Across the state, there has been a welcome side effect of high gas prices – fewer cars on the roads, and consequently fewer accident fatalities on New Jersey streets.  In fact, as a report by State Police confirms, NJ is well on its way to seeing the steepest drop in auto accident fatalities in two decades.

The drop in New Jersey accident deaths has been far-reaching, covering nearly all counties. Monmouth County, which had 55 accident fatalities last year, has seen that number drop to 42 so far this year. Middlesex County has had 44 people killed in accidents this year, compared to 54 last year. But it's in Ocean County that the drop has been the most dramatic. The County had a total of 35 accident deaths this year, compared to 74 in 2007.   Overall, there were 547 traffic accident deaths in the state, as of December 5^th this year, a fall of 19 percent from 2007.  

There's no doubt that the decline in the number of miles traveled in New Jersey over the spring and summer, have contributed to this decline in accidents, as well as deaths. According to statistics, motorists drove around 1.18 billion fewer miles this year, compared to the same period in 2007. As the economy has slowed down, and gas prices have continued to play party pooper with traveling plans, there have been fewer vehicles jostling for space on our streets, and fewer accidents being reported. These findings are not exclusive to New Jersey; across the country, people are putting travel plans on hold, and cutting down on miles driven in an effort to save on gas, and the effects are showing loud and clear in the form of less congested streets.

There is also a lot to be said for New Jersey's enforcement of traffic safety and awareness programs that have also contributed to the reduction in accident rates. The State Police in conjunction with the Division of Highway Traffic Safety has worked to crack down on aggressive driving and violations in accident-prone areas. The State police in particular, have enforced a targeted action program in collaboration with Rutgers University that allows officers to analyze accident data, and work with university engineers to devise methods that work to curb crash rates on high-risk roads. A section of the Garden State Parkway, that was prone to multiple accidents earlier, has seen its speed limit reduced, resulting in a fall in accident rates. However, even with the statewide drop – which is largely gas price-related – police officers say they are concerned about keeping crash rates low, especially as the busy holiday season approaches.

As a Monmouth County accident lawyer, I am only too painfully aware that even with the most well intentioned safety programs, there will always be a few motorists who slip through the cracks, causing serious accidents that result in severe injuries and deaths. 

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