At the 2014 International CES in Las Vegas, the Global Consumer and Electronics show, a self parking demonstration has been held. This is an idea which was science fiction a few years ago but it is now becoming reality. The technology has been developed by Swedish car manufacturer Volvo and French parts maker Valeo, and while still at the prototype stage it could be widely available within six years.

The car, with no one on board, can drive into a narrow car park space and park itself without hitting anything around it. Now some vehicles can already drive themselves in certain circumstances such as the Mercedes CLS coupe, which brakes by itself when the driver forgets, and some BMW models can go onto automatic pilot in traffic jams and warn drivers if they are about to go over a white line.

However, rapid progress in both radar and detection camera technology, lets cars see what is going on around them and onboard computers make the car react accordingly.

Now car manufacturers believe that by 2020 there will be cars which can drive by themselves and total robot cars by 2030.

During the first six months of this year, vehicle crashes resulting in fatalities have fallen by nearly 20 percent in Southern Nevada.

The figure was revealed at a meeting of the Southern Nevada Traffic Safety Committee, which meets every three months to discuss how to improve road safety

Sheriff Doug Gillespie from Clark County spoke at the meeting and said that both law enforcement and the courts must carry on enforcing traffic violations and that educating drivers on how to drive more safely was the key to preventing major crashes.

He said that the process needed to start before people learned to drive and that children should tell their parents if they have bad driving habits such texting on their phones when they are driving.

He said that in his opinion the youngsters of today were actually making better decisions than the older drivers as they have had more education on driving related issues such as driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs.

There has actually been a fall in the number of drunken driving arrests over the same time in 2013, by around a quarter and fatal accidents among drunk drivers are also down from 15 last year to 11 this year.

Trucker Sleep

It is part of the American culture to work as hard as you can, with people often being proud of the fact that they can get by on a small amount of sleep.

However, this is nothing to be proud of apparently as Dr. Mark Roseland of the National Transportation Safety Board has revealed, sleep is a vital part of overall health, in fact just as important as  food, water and air.

He states that if you do not get sufficient sleep, between seven and nine hours a night, your performance and judgment can become impaired meaning that you can be a danger to yourself and to those around you.

Dr. Roseland went on to say that it is not just one single night with less sleep which is a problem but the amount of sleep debt you have can mount up over time. Just one hour’s less sleep a night for a month means that you are 30 hours in debt and your performance will not return to optimum until that is made up. The good news is that you do not have to sleep for the full 30 hours as those with sleep debt sleep deeper.

Sleep is an essential part of living a healthy life. Getting enough sleep before getting behind the wheel is not just the right thing to do, but it is the law. If you, or someone you know, have been the victim of a serious car accident involving a driver who was driving while drowsy, contact the Reno accident attorneys of Jolley Urga Woodbury & Little at (702) 699-7500 or contact us online today.

Many people believe that only alcoholics die from the effects of alcohol.

However a new study by CDC has shown that a whopping one in ten deaths between 2006 and 2010 were due to excessive drinking.

Some of the deaths were indeed due to the effects of long term alcohol abuse including deaths from liver and heart disease, but other deaths arose from binge drinking.

Binge drinking is defined as having more than five or more drinks in a single session for men and 4 or more for women. Binge drinking has led to the top three causes of death including motor vehicle accidents at 25 percent, homicide at 16 percent and accidental falls at 15 percent.

There are many ways in which alcohol can affect mortality but the study showed the number of binge drinkers to be higher than the regular alcoholics.

Excessive Drinking Death

As can be seen by the study, alcohol is deadly due to both accidents which stem from those under its influences, and alcohol related diseases. If you, or someone you know, have been the victim of a serious car accident involving a drunken driver, contact the Reno accident attorneys of Jolley Urga Woodbury & Little at (702) 699-7500 or contact us online today.

Every year approximately 40,000 people are injured and 1500 people are killed as a result of automobile accidents involving drowsy drivers. Many people may not be aware of the fact that, according to experts, those who drive while fatigued or drowsy may be every bit as impaired as those who drive under the influence of alcohol. As can be seen in the recent deadly automobile accident involving comedian Tracy Morgan, those who drive while drowsy present significant hazards to themselves and those with whom they share the road.

In the following video you can see firsthand the effects of driving while drowsy. In the first video a driver apparently falls asleep at the wheel and crashes into oncoming traffic. In the second video a drowsy driver crashes into a police car. All drivers and passengers in both accidents lived.

Virginia Tech researchers recently said that up to 20% of all accidents involve drowsy drivers. As such, the numbers of automobile accidents in general, and serious accidents in particular, could be dramatically reduced if people were simply to stop driving while fatigue or drowsy.

Driving while drowsy is never recommended. Not only does the practice put the driver in danger, but it also threatens everyone else sharing the roads with them. Especially as it relates to driving a tractor trailer, drowsy driving can be deadly. If you, or someone you know, have been the victim of a serious car accident involving a drowsy driver, contact the Reno accident attorneys of Jolley Urga Woodbury & Little at (702) 699-7500 or contact us online today.