Injury lawyer gives 14 tips for protecting your kids in the car – let’s  prevent auto accidents

The new teen driving law in Michigan is a move in the right direction for May’s “National Youth Traffic Safety Month.” During the month of May,  the National Organizations for Youth Safety supports a number of projects to protect teen drivers and prevent car accidents. These include  traffic safety education projects, supporting local law enforcement and promoting legislation to protect teen drivers (statistically, teen drivers are by age group, the most dangerous and the most likely to cause a car accident, followed by elderly drivers).

As Michigan personal injury lawyers who concentrate on helping people injured in car accidents, we want to stress the importance of Youth Traffic Safety Month. The following statistics are grim, but point to a tremendous need to tighten safety for teen drivers and children riding as passengers.

•    The number one cause of accidental death for children ages 0-15 in Michigan is auto accidents.

•    In 2008, car accidents and truck accidents in Michigan injured 5,094 children and killed 39.

•    The danger is even greater for teens and young drivers: in 2008, car crashes killed 196 16-24-year-olds and injured 18,617.

•    To put that in perspective, three out of five accidental deaths for 16- to- 24 year-olds are due to motor vehicle accidents.

– Source, Michigan Traffic Crash Facts, Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

How can we help to save lives? Here are14 tips for protecting young children in the car and teen drivers. I hope these safety tips will help us prevent car accidents and save lives.

1. Secure your infant under the age of 1 and less than 20 lbs in a rear-facing car seat in your car or truck’s back seat.

2. Deactivate the front passenger airbag if a rear-facing car seat must be secured in your car or truck’s front seat.

3. Secure your toddler (1 year or older and 20 lbs or more) in a forward-facing car seat in your vehicle’s back seat.

4. Secure children 4 to 7 years old and under 4 foot 9 inches in height in a booster seat in your car or truck’s back seat.

5. Make sure your child’s safety and booster seat is properly installed. Use the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Child Safety Seat Inspection Station Locator and find a certified technician who will inspect your child seat and show you how to correctly install it.

6. Ensure there have been no manufacturer recalls for your child safety or booster seat by consulting the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s “Child Restraint Recall Campaign Listing.” It lists all child restraint recalls from 1990 to present by manufacturer.

7. Children 8 to 16 years old (and older) or children who are taller than 4 feet 9 inches should wear a properly adjusted seat belt.

8. Model safe behavior for children riding in your car or truck by wearing your seat belt and avoiding distracted driving behaviors, such as talking on your cell phone while driving, texting while driving, etc.

9. Secure all children 12 years old and younger in the rear-seat of your vehicle to avoid potential injury from a deployed airbag, should a car accident occur.

10. Stay off the road if you’ve been drinking alcohol.

12. Refuse to allow children to ride in a vehicle driven by someone who has been drinking alcohol.

13. Drive within the speed limit.

14. Drive a safe car or truck. Consult the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s 5-Star Safety Rating system to discover the crash worthiness and rollover safety of your car or truck.

For more child safety tips and Michigan resources for your kids, order a free copy of Michigan Auto Law’s book – How to Keep Your Children Safe – Simple Steps to Protect Your Loved Ones From Hidden Dangers.   This book is a compilation put together by the injury lawyers in my office and covers lessons from helping people who have lived with the injury or loss of a child.

- Steve Gursten is one of the nation’s top injury lawyers handling auto accident lawsuits. He is head of Michigan Auto Law and has received the highest verdict in the state for a car accident or truck accident victim in 2008, 2009 and 2010, according to Michigan Lawyers Weekly.

Having a cell phone is a privilege not a right, and I can revoke the privilege.

I can pick it up and look at your text messages any time I choose.

If you password protect it, I must know the password.

After her younger son got his phone, she picked it up and looked at the messages, but she couldn’t understand what they were about. Why? Because her son and his friends were using a different language — Text Lingo. (I don’t really know what kids call the shorthand language they use for texting each other; I just named it Text Lingo.)

She said she asked her son what some of it meant, and he told her. Well, he told her SOMEthing. If the phrase “IWSN” had been in the text, do you think he’d have told her that?

In any event, I gave the mom the link to the LRNTheLingo app that I blogged about here (and the meaning of IWSN is revealed). Maybe that app will help her keep up with what’s going on in her sons’ texting world.

And, being teenagers, sometimes they or their friends use bad judgment in what they put on their social media sites. In this case, though, their decisions could have long-range effects.

Here’s a link to a recent blog posting by the publisher of the Virginia Lawyers Weekly. The blog was based on a story that appeared in the U.S.News & World Report of the “5 Do’s and Don’ts for College Students Using Social Media.”

The short message is that prospective employers look at social media to find out what your teen is posting about herself and her friends. And, once it’s out there, it’s out there. Your teen may think the picture her friend posted of her doing something stupid was removed, but it’s still out there somewhere, and savvy employers are watching.

Savvy lawyers are watching, too. I have used social media to find out about a drunk driver who seriously injured a teenager. I found all kinds of postings on Facebook and My Space, all involving alcohol. That information will help when it’s time for me to talk to the young man under oath.

We make a commitment to keep our children safe in our cars. When they are small, we go to great expense to buy the best car seats we can and spend a lot of time buckling/unbuckling them in and out.  But what about when they are older?  And, what about buckling ourselves in?

March is Brain Injury Awareness Month. Brain injuries don’t just affect those who are injured; they affect everyone around them. If you are a parent and suffer a traumatic brain injury, your children’s lives will be forever altered along with yours. If you are a parent of a teenager who drives, your life will never be the same if she suffers a traumatic brain injury.  One way to take care of your family is to be sure seatbelts are used every time anyone gets into a car.

My friend Larry Buckfire, a car accident lawyer in Michigan, posted a short video, Embrace Life, on his website. It is less than two minutes long. There are no words. I suggest you watch it.  It is powerful.

If you have a teen driver in your home, show it to her. Watch it with her. It could speak more loudly than your words ever could.

The Virginia Senate passed a bill last week that would ban talking on a cell phone while driving unless the driver was using a hands-free device.

This isn’t the first time such a bill has come before the Virginia General Assembly, so its chances of passing are slim. However, I previously posted about the no-texting-while-driving law passed by the General Assembly that went into effect in July 2009, so maybe there’s a better chance at passage this year or next or the year after that or . . .

Driving while distracted is particularly dangerous when an inexperienced driver is behind the wheel, especially when that inexperienced driver is a teenager who is hard wired to believe she is bullet proof and that nothing can hurt her. The bill that goes to the Virginia House of Delegates won’t solve all the problems of distracted drivers, but it will be one more tool that might have an impact on keeping our teens safe.

Or, will it encourage talking on cell phones while driving — a distraction even if both hands are on the wheel.

Snowmobiling can be an exciting and invigorating activity. It also is a sport with potential for serious injury. In May 2003, the Journal of Pediatric Surgery reported on its study of data from 1991 to 2000 that found that the mean age of children who were admitted to hospital with snowmobile-related injuries was 12 years and that most of them were boys who had been driving the vehicle. Most of the accidents had been collisions with fixed objects, and the most common injury site was the head (even though most of the children had been wearing helmets). The most common cause of death was head injury.

As with all sports, there are some safety rules that need to be followed:

*Take a safety course – always.

* Use the right helmet – always.

*Never go alone – always have a “buddy” with you.

*Stay on established trails.

*Stay off unknown water. You don’t know how thick the ice is.

*Take a GPS with you.

But, what if your child did all the right things and was still injured in a snowmobile accident?  Look further. The accident could have been caused by a mechanical or design defect in the snowmobile that you did not know about.

For instance, if your son reports that he lost control of the vehicle, have it checked out — there may be a defect in the steering mechanism caused by a manufacturer that chose not to do a safety inspection before putting the snowmobile on the market. Did the brakes fail? Was the suspension correctly assembled? Did wiring or fuel leaks cause the snowmobile to catch on fire and explode?

If your child is injured, it’s a good idea to consult with a lawyer to get as much information as you can about what may have caused the accident and who, if anyone, should be held accountable for the injury. Call me at 703-260-6070 or send me an email at Sandra@RohrstaffLaw.com.  I will be happy to answer your questions.

As of July 2009, it is a traffic offense to drive while texting in Virginia.  There also are driving laws that apply to teens in particular that carry penalties of restricting (or removing) their right to drive. 

I posted a parent-teen driving contract at my firm’s website.  It’s designed to give parents an opportunity to talk straight to their teen, to let her now exactly what is expected of her, to get a commitment from her, and to set out the close-to-home consequences of breaking the contract.  It’s not the only answer, but it’s one arrow in a parent’s quiver for keeping their teen safe.