Most people care about a car accident if they are in one or if a loved one is involved. Maybe they glance over news stories about dramatic accidents and think about how tragic they are. But, on the whole, people just do not care enough about car accidents to worry about them.
It’s irrational. The United States loses between 30,000 and 40,000 people to car accidents year in and year out. But most people spend almost no time thinking about them or worrying about them until it happens.
Instead, they worry about things that “pose virtually no threat” at all. For instance, you’ve probably talked to someone who doesn’t want to swim in the ocean for fear of a shark attack, even though we tend to go years between fatal shark encounters. You’ve probably heard people worry about the possibility of terrorist attacks, even though they are very uncommon and even the worst ones take a mere fraction of the lives lost in car accidents every year.
This is not to belittle those fears or make less of those who have been lost in shark attacks, terrorist attacks or things of this nature. But it’s just to point out that the amount of energy that goes into worrying about these things is vastly disproportionate to the risk, whereas most people do not worry at all about car accidents, despite thousands happening every day.
Because car accidents are so common, it’s important to always drive defensively and obey traffic laws. If you do wind up getting into a car accident due to another party’s negligence, and you get seriously injured or lose a loved one, it’s time to find out what legal options you have.
