While many motor vehicle accidents happen on the road, collisions do occur in other places such as parking lots. As many as one in five car crashes occurs in a parking lot. With the holiday shopping season in full swing, parking lots everywhere are busier than usual, and accident risk in parking lots is at its peak. Approximately five hundred people die, and sixty thousand people are hurt in parking lot collisions each year.
Before you embark on your next journey to the store, the mall, your work parking garage, or any other place where you’ll be parking in a lot, take time to learn more about parking lot accidents and how you can reduce the likelihood that you will be involved in one. Understanding the causes of parking lot accidents can help you make safe choices as you navigate parking lots. For example, it is estimated that distracted drivers cause up to two-thirds of parking lot accidents. In addition to distractions like cell phones that can cause trouble for drivers both on the road and in parking lots, drivers in parking lots are often so focused on locating a parking space that they fail to see vehicles and pedestrians nearby. Driving in a crowded parking lot can be frustrating. Still, it is worth taking the extra time to reduce your accident risk by driving slowly and maintaining an awareness of everything that is going on around you as you navigate the busy aisles looking for a parking space. Sometimes, drivers are inappropriately aggressive when attempting to claim a parking spot. If this happens, it’s not worth risking a collision by trying to pull into a parking place that an aggressive driver is trying to claim. Yes, it is frustrating, but it’s preferable to possibly being injured or damaging your vehicle in a crash.
When you arrive at the end of an aisle, or you locate your parking spot, do not forget to use your turn signal so that other drivers can anticipate the movement of your vehicle. If you manage to find a pull-through parking space amidst the holiday shopping chaos, here’s one more reason to celebrate – pulling out of a parking spot is much easier and safer than backing out of it. If you do park in a space that you must back out of, look behind your vehicle before backing up and check blind spots carefully.
Once you have safely parked your vehicle, you’ll want to make sure that you get into and out of the building safely. Keep your cell phone in your pocket or purse. If you’re distracted by looking at a screen while you are walking through the parking lot, you could step out into traffic or walk behind a vehicle that is backing out of a parking space. Children are often hurt in parking lot accidents because they are not tall enough to be seen out of the rear window of many vehicles. Keep kids close to you and hold their hand as you walk together through the parking lot.
Nearly fifteen percent of automobile accidents that cause damage occur in parking lots. If you were hurt or if your vehicle was damaged in a Mississippi parking lot accident, call the Mississippi Automobile Accident Attorneys at Barrett Law PLLC, at 1 (800) 707-9577.