Atlanta’s Worst Car Crashes: November 2008

Why do we have so many deadly car wrecks here in Atlanta? And what can we do to cut back on them? I practice law here in Atlanta, and I represent people who need an Atlanta car accident lawyer. I have met with families who have been devastated because they lost someone they loved very dearly in a car crash, and I have seen people with serious injuries struggling to rebuild their physical health and deal with the crushing financial and emotional consequences of a serious personal injury from an auto collision. I have been blogging about the car accidents that happened in 2008 and 2009 (the latest data available) in order to see whether we can see trends that would help us cut back on these crashes.

Today I will be talking about the deadly car crashes that happened in the city of Atlanta in November 2008. That month five people died in car accidents. Atlanta police attributed one of those five fatal car wrecks to a drunken driver.

On November 2, 2008, an Atlanta driver died when he crashed his car on I-285 at Langford Pkwy. / SR-166. The accident happened at 1:27 a.m.

Then, some two weeks later, a three-car crash occurred just after midnight, at 12:41 a.m. The car crash, which happened at the intersection of Moreland Ave. /SR-42 and Constitution Rd. here in Atlanta, left one person dead.

On November 25, 2008, a pedestrian was hit and killed at the corner of Northside Dr. / SR-3 and Western Ave. Two different vehicles wound up involved in the accident, which took place at 7:26 p.m. Atlanta police said that the wreck was caused by a DUI / drunken driver.

November 26, 2008, was an exceptionally bad day for fatal car wrecks here in Atlanta. Two deadly crashes occurred, the first at 11:50 a.m. In that first wreck, one person was killed in a two-car collision on I-285 between the Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. exit and the Cascade Rd. exit. That evening, a pedestrian was struck and killed at the intersection of Peachtree St. and Harris St. The accident happened at 10:44 p.m.

I am pulling this data from the FARS database. FARS stands for “Fatality Analysis Reporting System.” FARS is maintained by a federal agency, the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration. By law, all 50 states and also U.S. territories are supposed to provide fatal car crash data to NHTSA for inclusion in FARS. The idea behind the system is to allow people to spot trends and particular dangers in the roadway and street system as a whole, or in a particular area. Obviously my searches dealt with Atlanta.

One surprising thing about November – and December – 2008 was that so many pedestrians lost their lives in those two months. I was expecting to see that fewer pedestrians were killed in the colder, winter months, because fewer people are out walking. Nonetheless, five pedestrians were killed in those two months — two in November, and three more in December.