Car accidents impact a wide variety of individuals in the San Francisco Bay Area every day. Two of the most recent prominent area car accidents involve San Francisco 49er Aldon Smith and an airport caterer. Aldon Smith was a passenger in a car which crashed into a tree in Santa Clara County last Friday. The accident occurred when the driver swerved off of the road to avoid a deer.
Motorcyclists are among the most vulnerable individuals on area roads. Many California motorcycle accidents occur because cars suddenly enter the path of a motorcycle and the motorcyclist does not have the time or ability to respond without laying the bike or crashing into the car.
Authorities in Sacramento are receiving $1.5 million in federal money which will support law enforcement efforts to prevent texting while driving car accidents. Texting is a leading cause of distracted driving car accidents, which kill over 3,000 people annually. Despite being illegal in California, millions of drivers text every day and state studies have shown that over 10 percent of California are using their cellphones during any given daytime hour.
Several recent San Francisco Bay Area traffic accidents have raised safety concerns surrounding the prevalence of bad driving behavior which kills hundreds of Californians every year.
In our last post we discussed a deadly Walnut Creek pedestrian accident which killed a woman and left her daughter-in-law in critical condition. This is one of many recent serious car accidents to occur in California. Possibly the most high profile of these crashes was a recent Los Angeles pedestrian accident which injured almost a dozen people, including several children.
Pedestrian accidents are a year-round problem in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area. There are many common contributing factors to pedestrian accidents including driver distraction and drunk driving. It is unclear whether drunk driving played a role in the most recent Bay Area pedestrian accident which killed one person this weekend.
A recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and prevention indicates that individuals living in large cities such as San Francisco are less likely to be killed in a car accident than individuals living in rural areas.
CBS San Francisco reports that a motorcyclist suffered life-threatening head trauma Friday evening after a Castro District traffic accident. The crash happened shortly before 8 p.m. when the motorcyclist unsuccessfully attempted to pass a vehicle and collided head-on with an oncoming car.