In my most recent legal blog posts, I have been chronicling the deaths
from car accidents that occurred in the City of Atlanta in 2008. I am
using information maintained by the National Highway and Traffic Safety
Administration (“NHTSA”). NHTSA requires all states to send
in data about the fatal car accidents that occur in their jurisdictions,
and NHTSA compiles all of the information in a database called
FARS, which stands for Fatality Analysis Reporting System.
I described Atlanta’s February car wreck deaths in my most recent
blog entry, and the January traffic fatalities in the post before that.
I am Atlanta lawyer, and I am hoping that by going through this data I
can draw some conclusions about the most dangerous places and times for
wrecks in and around Atlanta, in hopes that we can pick out some patterns
and decrease the number of fatal car wrecks we have here.
In this post I will be talking about the fact that a very large number
of people -11 in all – were killed in just two months of 2008. In
March 2008, three people lost their lives, and eight more were killed
here in Atlanta in April car wrecks. One of the most striking point about
the wrecks in March and April is that in four of them pedestrians were killed.
On March 14, a pedestrian walking along SR-154 / Campbellton Rd., near
the intersection with Childress Dr., was struck and killed by a car. The
accident happened at 10:38 p.m., when it would have been dark outside.
One week later, on March 21, another pedestrian was struck in the downtown
area, while walking along Coca Cola Place near its intersection with Butler
St. The accident occurred at 8:21 a.m., so it was light out at the time
of the collision.
A person was killed in a three-vehicle crash on March 29th, on Peachtree
Rd. / SR-141, just south of the Lenox Mall and Phipps Plaza area.
Even more deadly car wrecks occurred in April than in March 2008. On the
second day of April, a pedestrian was struck and killed on the Lenox Connector
/ Buckhead Loop / SR-141 at Tower Place. Two vehicles were involved in
the collision, which happened at 8:38 p.m.
Two days later a person died in a single-vehicle accident on SR-400. That
same day a horrific DUI accident occurred on Moreland Ave. / SR-42 at
Custer Ave. Three people were killed in the collision of two vehicles,
which happened at 9:05 p.m. The police said that the driver of one of
the vehicles had been drinking and was under the influence at the time
of the car collision.
On April 10, one person died in an auto accident on Lakewood Freeway /
SR-166 at I-75. That accident happened at 4:10 in the afternoon. Thenext
day, another person was killed in a single-vehicle crash on I-75 at the
Downtown Connector.
The final crash of April 2008 occurred at the intersection of W Whitehall
St. SW / SR-14 and York Ave. In the accident, a vehicle struck two pedestrians
at 5:32 p.m. One of the pedestrians was killed, although the other survived.