West Virginia Car Accident Attorney, Mark Underwood writes:
West Virginians have a lot to be proud of: we’re the best in the country when it comes to measures of racial equality and equality of education; and we’re 10th in the nation when it comes to affordable living. But a new study by the fine folks at EverQuote suggests that we’ve claimed a dubious honor: West Virginia leads the nation in abrupt turns.
EverQuote, an online insurance marketer, gathered data from 2.7 million car trips over 230 million miles on its EverDrive app. It found that “abrupt turns… were most common in rural West Virginia (26 percent) and North Carolina (20 percent).”
It’s almost as though West Virginians hate to spoil the surprise.
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Jokes aside, there is a serious set of issues here: EverQuote, for instance, suggests that abrupt turns may be a symptom of distracted driving. Other research has suggested it may also be a sign of drunk driving.
That’s bad news, especially considering that West Virginia saw a precipitous drop in traffic fatalities in the years after it banned texting-and-driving, in 2012.
The situation could get even graver. Some traffic safety experts, for instance, are already panicking about the future dangers of driverless cars. Although these cars are programmed to obey traffic laws to the tee, in current form, the vehicles often are too slavish to the rules. This hyper-vigilance ironically creates hazards for human drivers. And it’s not just cutting edge technophiles in the Bay Area who need to worry. WV has become a major testing ground, in part because West Virginia University researchers are among the world leaders in driverless technology.
West Virginians have come a long way in the last few years when it comes to making their roads safer. But the EverQuote study suggests that there’s a huge difference between “safer” and “safe.”
So West Virginia Car Accident Attorney says: “Buckle up, West Virginia, stay alert-and don’t be afraid to spoil the surprise when you turn left.”
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