The Thanksgiving holiday may look significantly different this year with gatherings not quite as big and less holiday travel, but many will likely get together in smaller groups to celebrate with friends or local family.  With less of a distance to travel it may be tempting to drink a little more then you otherwise might have because the ride home is a lot shorter.  This is, of course, a big mistake.  It doesn’t take much alcohol for you to get over the legal limit to drive, which in Connecticut is .08.  Getting to .08 blood alcohol level can take as few as 3 beers. It is important to follow all of the same steps you would follow if you were traveling a long distance and doing any drinking at all.  You should; Designate a driver.  This is the best thing you can do to keep everyone in your car safe Read the full article…

If you typically travel for the Thanksgiving holiday, you might feel a little lonely on Connecticut’s roads as AAA has confirmed that it expects holiday travel to be extremely light this year.  While original forecasts indicated that it was expected that 50 million people would be traveling by car to Thanksgiving dinner, AAA has revised that number down by about 10%. The expectedly lower than average travel is due to the continued decline in health metrics concerning COVID-19 cases as well as the economic impact of the pandemic.  AAA is seeing similar trends as it saw at the height of the Great Recession in 2008 when the country experienced it’s greatest decline in holiday travel to date. With this being said, you should still be careful driving on the roads to avoid a New Haven auto accident.  With fewer cars on the roads there are unique challenges that can have Read the full article…

A group of researchers from the Connecticut Children’s Injury Prevention Center (IPC) looked at traffic data from post-pandemic and compared it to pre-pandemic numbers to come up with some interesting statistics that relate to New Haven auto accidents and those throughout the state.  There was good news in these numbers, but also some troubling news as well. Let’s start with the good news.  In the post-pandemic world miles traveled were reduced during the height of the stay-at-home orders by 40%.  The decrease in traffic volume led to an overall reduction in motor vehicle accidents and the average number of accidents that occurred daily.  These are good statistics to note, but they don’t tell the whole story. Researchers compared the same time frames in 2020 to those in 2017, 2018, and 2019 to draw some conclusions.  Here’s what they found: Single vehicle crashes doubled in 2020 Fatal single vehicle crashes quadrupled in Read the full article…

Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are far too common these days.  There are many ways you can sustain a TBI which include things like getting into a New Haven auto accident, slipping and falling on the ice or a sidewalk, at work, and in many other ways.  These types of injuries can be serious and are often life threatening.  In fact, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) traumatic brain injuries lead to over 150 deaths per DAY.  This is a staggering number. Unfortunately this number is not going down either, in fact it is going up and fast.  According to a study conducted by the CDC, brain injuries leading to hospitalization and even deaths increased between 2006 and 2014 by 53%.  This number resulted in 2.87 million emergency room visits, hospitalizations and deaths in 2014 only.  Of those 2.87 million cases, nearly 900,000 were in children. This type Read the full article…