St. Petersburg Personal Injury Law Blog

The number of driver's licenses in Florida that have been revoked due to the physical or mental unfitness of the driver has more than doubled in the last decade. The main reasons for license revocation: problems related to dementia, stroke, seizures, and other health conditions.

According to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, the reason for the spike in license revocations is that more drivers are being reported as mentally or physically unfit to drive. A longstanding, but little-known Florida law, allows anyone to notify the state, in writing, about motorists with mental or physical limitations or conditions that might affect their driving.

Most reports under this law came from family members, the public or a professional after the driver had been in a car accident, became repeatedly confused or was consistently driving erratically. Last year, 9,105 drivers were reported, up from 8,294 in 1999.

Florida cities ranked one, two, three and four in order of most dangerous cities for pedestrians in the United States, according to a recent study, Dangerous by Design, by Transportation for America, a nonprofit safety advocacy organization. The cities are ranked as follows:

1. Orlando-Kissimmee, FL
2. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL
3. Jacksonville, FL
4. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL

Cars that talk to each other may seem the stuff of movies, but they may soon be able to do just that. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is partnering with the Crash Avoidance Metrics Partnership, a coalition of nine auto manufacturers, to launch the Connected Vehicle Safety Pilot Program. The program utilizes wireless technologies called Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) that allow vehicles to communicate with one another and with the surrounding infrastructure in an effort to reduce car accidents.

The program evaluate how real drivers react to vehicle-to-vehicle applications in cars that do things like warn the driver about hazards in intersections, an upcoming red light, other cars breaking suddenly, icy road conditions or simply assist a driver pass another car safely. Researchers want to determine how accepting drivers are of the technology and whether significant driver distractions arise from the warnings the applications give to drivers.