Car accidents are never good. The best case result is that nobody is hurt and the only damage is material and will cost money to fix. If someone is injured or killed, the accident can change peoples' lives for the worse on a permanent basis. It behooves everyone to think about avoiding car accidents each and every time they get behind the wheel. Here are some things to think about to avoid being involved in a car accident.


The biggest cause of accidents is drinking and driving, and alcohol is involved in about one-third of all auto accidents. Even if one is not is an accident but gets a citation for driving with a blood alcohol over the legal limit, this ticket can end up costing about $10,000. How can this be? The fine associated with the traffic ticket might be about $100 or so, but you will almost certainly have your auto insurance premiums raised, and this can amount to a couple of hundred dollars per month, and this can go on for 3-4 years. You might also have to pay an attorney to try to get you out of the ticket, and that can cost several thousand dollars as well. With the legal limit in most states for blood alcohol at .08, it doesn't take many drinks to be considered impaired.

Driver distraction is another major cause of traffic accidents, and this accounts for about one quarter of the total. In fact, driver distraction is the cause of over 4,300 accidents every day in the United States. Most of us have seen people reading a newspaper while driving a car down the highway. Even worse are people who send text messages, as that takes two hands. Eating food from a tray on your lap or changing the radio station or a CD are risky things for a driver to do. If those activities are necessary the best thing to do is to pull over to the side and accomplish the task. You will lose a couple of minutes, but you could be avoiding an accident that could cause serious injury.

A third major consideration is to leave enough distance between you and the car in front of you. The safety rule of thumb is one car length for every ten MPH.

The three simple behaviors mentioned above are almost trivial, so much so that many if not most drivers just disregard them. More attention to these details, however, would prevent innumerable auto accidents and prevent large numbers of injuries and deaths.

More Information:

Check out Denver Accident Attorneys, to find contact info for experienced accident and injury attorneys in Denver area. Also find out about Truck Accidents.