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Motorcyclist, Daughter Seriously Injured in Oakland, California Accident

A motorcyclist and his daughter were seriously injured in an accident in Oakland this week. This accident comes after string of serious accidents involving motorcycles that have caused great concern to California motorcycle accident lawyers.

This most recent accident involved a 37-year-old motorcyclist and his eight-year-old daughter who was riding with him.  The accident occurred on Friday evening. The motorcycle seems to have been struck by a Honda Odyssey van that was trying to make a left turn to enter an intersection. The van struck the motorcycle, and both the motorcyclist and his daughter were thrown off the bike. They were nonresponsive at first, but the daughter regained consciousness after paramedics arrived. No one in the van was injured. The two injured persons are currently recovering at a hospital.

The accident occurred in a week when California car accident lawyers learned that the number of people killed on US highways in 2009 has dropped to its lowest level in many years. Earlier this week, the Department of Transportation released elementary data from 2009 which showed that the numbers of people killed last year in accidents had dropped 9% from 2008. It was the 15th consecutive quarter of declining highway fatality rates, and it has been a source of great encouragement to the transportation secretary, auto safety advocates and California injury lawyers.

The Transportation Secretary attributed this drop to a number of factors, including high rates of seatbelt use across the country, safer automobiles and low rates of alcohol-related car accidents. However, Sec. Ray LaHood insisted that more needs to be done to bring those numbers down further. The number of fatalities last year was close to 34,000, and that is still too high a number for any American to tolerate.

The Secretary mentioned more focus on distracted driving as a way to reduce those fatality rates. Distracted driving has received great attention over the past year. In California, the term takes on an especially painful meaning. In 2008, 25 people were killed in a Metrolink train accident caused by an engineer who was text messaging at the controls. Earlier this year, the National Safety Council estimated that approximately 28 percent of all accidents in the country are related to distracted driving, like use of cell phones and text messaging while driving.

However, the Secretary failed to mention the role that motorcycle accidents continue to play in fatality rates in the US. Even as highway fatality rates have been declining, rates of fatalities in motorcycle crashes have actually been increasing over the past decade. The situation has been no different in California.  According to estimates from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there has been a steady increase in the number of people killed in motorcycle accidents here over the past five years.

There needs to be better focus on motorcycle accident prevention and promotion of motorcycle safety, if we intend to prevent at least some of those 34,000 deaths every year.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of motorcycle accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The Reeves Law Group is not representing any party in the matters discussed in this posting.

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