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Travel & Road Safety Tips Explained by Florida Accident Lawyer

07/16/2019
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Tips on How To Prepare for Travel and Stay Safe on the Road From Florida Car Accident Lawyer

Woman: It’s time to Take 5. Now You Know.

Candi: Road trips can be great family fun, but may not always go as planned. Here to give us some travel tips to your vacation as memorable for the right reasons is Brian Denney [personal injury], [car accident] of the law firm of Searcy Denney. Welcome, Brian.

Brian: Thank you.

Candi: So, what are some tips that you can share with people so they can prepare for their trip before they leave?

Brian: One of the first things you can do before you go on a vacation and leave your house unattended is think twice about letting everybody know on social media where you’re gonna be. A lot of people get really excited, and they wanna let their friends know about the good time they’re about to have. But just always keep in mind if you decide to do that, that it’s not just your friends that could be monitoring your social media account. People who wanna come rob your house, burglars might be doing the same thing. Another thing you always wanna do is make sure you stop your mail. It signals you’re not home. Also, you can stop your newspaper, just pick up the phone, give them a call, you can halt service for the time that you’re away. And finally, and maybe the most important thing is lean on your community. Give a call to a trusted neighbor or friend, have them come by your house and take a look. That way they can check to make sure for example, you don’t have a water leak that’s, you know, that’s caused a big problem. Some people even turn their water off when they’re out of town. But having somebody keep an eye on your house will prevent a lot of bad things from happening.

Candi: What are some things that people can do to make sure that their vehicle is safe before taking the road trip?

Brian: Yeah, so this is a really important one. So, the last thing you wanna do is be on a two-lane road in the middle of nowhere, it’s 100 degrees outside and your transmission goes kerplunk, because you didn’t take your car to get serviced. You were ignoring that warning light that came on on your vehicle. So, be sure to take your vehicle in, particularly if you’re due for a service. Along those same lines, you wanna always check the tires and be sure there’s enough tread on the tires. Same thing goes for spare tires. If you run over a nail, and you have to put a spare tire on your vehicle, that spare tire has to be in good working order. We had an unfortunate case where someone had a spare tire hanging off the back of the vehicle, exposed to the elements, sunlight and everything else. And that tire had some cracks in it, they stopped at a service station and the service folk said, “No, it’s fine, you go ahead and put that spare tire on the vehicle.” Well, unfortunately, when this family got down the road, the tire exploded, flipped the car and resulted in a horrible tragedy. So, we don’t wanna see that happen to anybody. You have to be really careful to examine your vehicle before you leave. Also, finally, one other thing, be sure you have in your vehicle an emergency kit. Cars are basically computers with wheels on them these days. And if your electrical system goes down, it’s not gonna move. And so you always wanna have an emergency kit, you can get LED flares, not like the ones you light, those are great too. But now that they make them where you can just reach out your window and stick them on the side of the car. Because of the many bodies of water that are in Florida and throughout the southeast for that matter, it’s always a good idea to have some type of hammer or device that you can break a window with in case you’re faced with that horrific scenario that your car for whatever reason goes into a body of water. You got to be able to get out.

Candi: What are some things that people can do to stay safe while on the road?

Brian: Yeah, so the most important thing you can do while you’re on the road to stay safe, is be sure that whoever is operating the vehicle is alert. So, what does that mean? Be sure they got a good night’s sleep the night before, be sure that they are paying attention to what they’re doing. Not picking up their phone, not texting people, you got to have your eyes on the road. Even with all the modern technology that helps you stay in your lane and everything like that, you still have to have the human touch, you still have to have the operator have their eyes on the road. And you wanna be sure that if that person is tired that’s operating the vehicle that they pull over the car at a safe place, at a rest area, somewhere safe where they can take a nap. We see this problem in trucking cases that our firm handles where these truck drivers have been on the road way too long, they’ve logged way too many hours and they’re tired. You know, very bad, horrible things can happen in those scenarios. So those are some things you can do while you’re on the road to stay safe.

Candi: Thank you, Brian.

Brian: My pleasure.

Candi: If you have any questions about your rights and road safety, just visit searcylaw.com.

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