New Program Seeks to Minimize Florida Car Accidents

Motor vehicle accidents can cause serious injuries and sometimes even lead to death. The situation is even more tragic when children are involved. Sadly, car accidents involving children strike time and time again throughout the state.

For example, on Saturday, December 1st a 14 year old girl died in a car crash in Baker County. Two other teenagers were injured. According to the Florida Times-Union, a vehicle overturned as the 17-year old driver attempted to pass another vehicle. The three teens in the car were all ejected with one suffering fatal injuries and the other two transported to a local hospital in critical condition.

This is one of many deadly accidents that occur each year in Florida that involves teenagers. Many safety advocates argue that programs exists that can help raise teen driver awareness and track traffic accidents. For example, Florida Highway Patrol Captain, Keith Gaston uses a program he developed in college to help collect accident information for specific areas in Florida. This “Signal Four Analytics” program can inevitably help police address high volume accident areas in hopes that less people will get hurt on the road.

According to Florida Today, this pilot program is able to compile information regarding traffic accidents that occur within the state including “basic collision facts to more detailed data available to traffic investigators and others.” This information can help law enforcement determine the time and location of accidents to see where and when these accidents frequently occur. Motor vehicle accidents can cause serious injuries and sometimes even lead to death. The situation is even more tragic when children are involved. Sadly, car accidents involving children strike time and time again throughout the state.

Gaston suspects that the December 1st accident occurred at a high frequency time for teenagers, which is after school. Now that they are able to target the time and place, they can focus on enforcing safety measures among young drivers in that area by issuing warnings or when necessary, giving tickets. Gaston admits, however, that the goal of this program is not to give tickets but to decrease the number of accidents overall. Educating drivers and increasing patrol are among the safety measures Gaston intends to put in place.

This program may be an innovative step for law enforcement to use to decrease the number of accidents that occur within our state. In the past paper reports and simple intuition was used to target the areas of frequent car accidents. Hopefully, as other public agencies enter other information into the database, such as insurance details and data about which hospitals victims were sent, the program can be further useful to these agencies. Thus far the state has provided $179,000 to expand this pilot program so that it can be free to all public agencies such as emergency medical providers and traffic engineers. What started as a pilot program is now proving to be a helpful guide to law enforcement.

Legal Help After Car Accidents in Florida
Hopefully this pilot programs and similar efforts actually work to minimize the damage caused by car accidents. At the same time it is important for all local residents to remember that they have legal options anytime that they are involved in an accident which may have been caused by another. For help in Miami and other South Florida communities please contact the accident attorneys at Gerson & Schwartz to learn about your options.