Kansas City, Missouri Motor Vehicle Accidents Blog

The Missouri House committee is currently considering a statewide ban on texting while driving. The ban has support from safety advocates and many lawmakers. Last year a similar bill was passed by the House, but died in the Missouri Senate.

A tragic Missouri texting while driving accident was highlighted by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in its national push to encourage all states to ban the nonemergency use of cellphones behind the wheel. In the August 2010 accident, a teen driver was sending and receiving multiple text messages in the moments leading up to a fatal collision on Interstate 44. The teen's pickup, two school buses and an 18-wheeler were involved in the wreck. Two people lost their lives, including the teen driver, and over 30 were injured.

The Missouri Highway Patrol has good news for motorists- More big rigs seem to be adhering to safety regulations. Hopefully, this results in fewer Missouri truck accidents and safer highways for all drivers. Although the number of truck inspections last year increased by over 30 percent compared to 2010, violations only rose a mere three percent.

What is behind this encouraging trend of safer semis? A captain from the Missouri Highway Patrol gave credit to information about trucking companies being available on the internet. He told KMOX that, "Other companies and people who use those companies to transport their products can get on there and look and see what their safety record is. See how many inspections their company had and how their vehicles have done."

It would seem to make sense to think that red-light cameras would cause more drivers to stop at intersections, and thereby decrease accidents. However, a police analysis of Kansas City's red-light monitoring found just the opposite. Despite almost 200,000 tickets being issued since January 2009, accidents at most of these monitored intersections have not been reduced and have actually increased.

The data revealed that Kansas City motor vehicle accidents were up at 11 of the 17 intersections monitored by cameras. On average, wrecks increased by 18 percent. Accidents causing injury, rear-end collisions and overall auto accidents all rose. The only type of accident to decrease was right-angle crashes, which is the type most frequently caused by running red-lights.

Many sleep-deprived drivers are on America's roads. Drowsy drivers are responsible for a significant number of motor vehicle accidents each year. In an effort to combat this problem car manufacturers are developing smarter vehicles that can sense when a driver may be nodding off.

Ford recently announced that "lane-keeping technology" would be offered as an option on the 2013 Explorer and Fusion. The system uses a camera attached to the rear-view mirror. When a vehicle is going over 40 mph the technology senses unintentional veering by using lane markings. Unless a turn signal is activated, the system will begin to vibrate the steering wheel to alert the driver.

The system even goes one step further. If the driver neglects to correct the problem, the technology uses the power steering system to direct the vehicle back into the middle of the lane.

A tragic Missouri accident that happened last year is attracting new attention as the NTSB focuses on the issue of distracted driving. The fatal Missouri texting while driving accident happened when a teenager was texting as he drove his pickup truck. The pickup ran into the rear of a tractor trailer, and caused a chain reaction of crashes involving two school buses.

The accident resulted in the death of both the pickup driver and a student on one of the school buses. Almost 40 others were injured.

Terrible accidents such as this demonstrate why there has been a nationwide push to promote awareness of the dangers of distracted driving, along with the enactment of laws banning texting while driving. Currently over thirty states ban texting while driving, and more are certain to follow suit.

Although collisions between motor vehicles are usually given more attention, pedestrian accidents can be just as deadly, and are becoming more common. Unfortunately, Missouri pedestrian accidents are on the rise.

It is expected that Missouri will experience more pedestrian fatalities this year than in 2010. According to the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT), in 2010 there were 57 pedestrian deaths in the state; as of September this year there were already 54.

A pedestrian is at greatest risk for getting hit by a vehicle when he or she is leaving a stalled vehicle or walking on the side of the road, these activities are involved in 60 percent of pedestrian fatalities.

In 2004, the Missouri Coalition for Roadway Safety was created to reduce the staggering number of traffic fatalities in the state. The coalition includes safety advocates, law enforcement agencies, engineers, emergency workers, educators, and community members working with the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT). Missouri has reported decreases in traffic fatalities for the past five years, and for 2011, the state's life saving highway safety trends earned it special recognition.

On September 2011, the Governors' Highway Safety Administration awarded the MoDOT its Peter K. O'Rourke Special Achievement Award. The prestigious award was offered to Missouri officials for the successful "Arrive Alive" campaign, which helped reduce traffic deaths by more than 35 percent in five years. In the past year alone, crash-related fatalities declined 12 percent from 604 to 527.

Missouri's Department of Transportation attributes the initiative's success in motor vehicle accident prevention to several factors, including more comprehensive driver education, promotion of seat belt use, better warning systems, road and bridge improvements and advances in vehicle safety features. State officials added brighter striping and signs, improved shoulders, added rumble strips on 5,600 centerline miles, smoothed pavement and installed 640 miles of median guard cables.

Auto accidents are all too common on the highways and streets, but thankfully, they have been on a steady decline for decades. This is partly thanks to new technology. More precisely, this is thanks to safety technology in vehicles becoming more widely available over time.

First utilized in high priced luxury cars in the late eighties, stability control is one of the greatest technological developments dealing with vehicle safety of the last few decades. In a recent report the National Highway Traffic Safety Association (NHTSA) said the technology, also known as anti-rollover, can reduce the risk of fatal motor vehicle accidents by a good eighteen percent.

As of 2009, the technology was installed in some fifty or so percent of trucks and about eighty percent of passenger cars. And soon, both those numbers should rise to one hundred, as anti-rollover will be mandatory in all new cars by 2012.