Hard braking is a sign of unsafe, sometimes even aggressive, driving, yet many in Mississippi get in situations where this becomes necessary. According to a study from Allstate, the rate of hard-braking events can have a connection with the rate of car collisions leading to a property damage claim. It ranked the 200 most populous cities in the country by their rate of hard-braking events and collisions.
The correlation was clear in the least safe city in the U.S., which was Baltimore, Maryland. There, drivers experience a car collision every four years, and they will be in more than 30 hard-braking events for every 1,000 miles they travel. Compare this to the national averages: a collision every 10.57 years, and 19 hard-braking events per 1,000 miles.
In the safest of the 200 cities, which was Brownsville, Texas, drivers are involved in a collision every 15 years. Unfortunately, Allstate had no hard-braking data to provide for this city.
For its study, Allstate analyzed claims data spanning January 2016 to December 2017. Its hard-braking data was gathered through the drivers who voluntarily enrolled in that two-year period for the auto insurer’s Drivewise telematics program, a program that helps participants improve their driving skills and provides them with insurance discounts. The 200 cities were selected using data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
When car accidents occur because of someone’s negligent or reckless actions, then those who were not to blame may have good grounds for a claim. Mississippi follows a pure comparative negligence rule, which means that technically, no one is barred from recovering damages even if that person is 99% at fault. Naturally, the greater one’s degree of fault, the harder it is to have a case. Victims may want a lawyer to assess the case before anything else.
