When Walking Turns Dangerous
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When Walking Turns Dangerous

by | Mar 2, 2019 | Vehicle Accidents

The alternative to using a car is public transportation, bicycle riding, and walking. Unfortunately, there is only one freeway transportation and that is walking, unless you were gifted a bike. Walking is healthy for you and is a common form of transit. Walking can help reduce blood pressure and help keep your heart healthy. Many walks around the city as a form of exercise or tourists wanting to go sightseeing. Walking helps the environment and reduces the amount of traffic on the road. The problem with walking is that it isn’t as respected as driving. In other words, drivers are selfish and only look out for other cars. They do not look out for pedestrians. They are also very bad at looking out for motorcycles or bicyclist, but that is a whole other conversation.

Pedestrians are to do their best to walk in designated areas. However, despite pedestrians following the right rules, they get hit anyway. In 2016 the Missouri Department of Transportation stated that 83 pedestrians were killed. They stated that this equates to nearly 10% of traffic accident fatalities. People are getting hit and drivers are not changing their behaviors to look out for people. Although they did not state the common cause for getting hit by a car, the national statistics suggest that people who live in urban areas are more likely to be hit by a car than rural. They also state that you are more likely to be hit at night than during the day, and by using a non-intersection; however, that does not mean that people who were hit were not using proper crosswalks.

What Happened

Recently, there have been multiple news stories of pedestrians hit while walking in the travel lane on major highways. Clearly, these are examples of how not to walk on a roadway. You want to make sure that are walking a distance from the road. You have to consider if the car has to run off the road too because run-off the road accidents are the most common kind of car accidents in Missouri. However, this news story of a man in his 70’s does not involve walking along a major highway. Instead, the man was walking in his neighborhood when struck by a truck. Thankfully the truck driver stayed until authorities arrived. Unfortunately, after several attempts to sustain the person, the elder gentleman passed away.

There was no explanation on how the truck driver hit the person. One can only speculate that the truck could not see the person or the truck driver was distracted in some way causing the car to drift and hit the person. We don’t know, but what we do know is that if you or someone you love has been hurt while walking then you need to reach out to our pedestrian accident lawyer at Mayer & Rosenberg in Kansas City. Call 816-941-8949 or click here to start your free consultation with us today. We will get the justice you deserve.

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