Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.

Articles Posted in Personal Injury

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safety culture constructionConstruction workers have a high risk of getting injured or even dying in an accident while at work. Construction accidents often happen when negligent contractors try to save time or money and put profit ahead of their own workers safety. A new study looking at safety practices among contractors shows that increased safety on construction sites indeed increases Return on Investment (ROI) and attracts and retains more talented hard hats. The recently released study “Building a Safety Culture SmartMarket Report” was produced by the Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR) and United Rental, a construction equipment rental company.

For the study, Dodge Data & Analytics analyzed 254 American contractors using 33 indicators of safety culture in the construction industry. They found that approximately one third of the contractors were promoting a high safety culture standard in their day to day business and were investing heavily in safety management practices. Another third were somewhat promoting safety culture in their company. The last third were contractors who didn’t have much interest about safety culture and didn’t invest much in it.

The study shows that contractors who invested the most in workers safety reported less injuries, improved their projects quality, increased their projects ROI, had a lower staff turnover and were able to attract staff more easily than contractors who didn’t invest in workers safety.

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A female pedestrian was critically injured after being hit by a school bus in New York City. The bus accident happened Monday morning around 9:20 am in Queens. The 32 year old woman was crossing Grand Ave near 74th street when she was struck by a yellow school bus. No children were on board. The woman suffered head trauma and a broken shoulder. She was transported to the hospital where she was listed in critical condition.  There is no cross walk at the intersection of 74th Street and Grand Ave, making it a dangerous intersection for pedestrians.

pedestrian accident location

picture source: Google Map

 

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Daniel+Pollack-1To avoid children being injured, re-traumatized and abused again it is important that potential adoptive and foster parents be proprely vetted. A proper vetting doesn’t only mean criminal background check identity verification, employment history, character, and residency but also going through the life history of each parent and make sure the information they provided is accurate and complete. In a recent article, Daniel Pollack, a professor at Yeshiva University’s School of Social Work in New York City explains what prospective adoptive or foster parents should expect during the vetting process. The complete article can be downloaded here

In another short article, Daniel Pollack looks at informal parenting. For various reasons some children are being raised by caregivers who are not the parents. Caregivers can be relatives or friends of the parents. Most of the time no lawyers or legal documents are signed between the parents and the caregivers. It is based on a trust relationship. However in some specific cases informal parenting arrangements may need approval from the State. The article discusses these specific cases and can be downloaded here.

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A woman was seriously injured in a car accident early Sunday morning. The accident happened in Norwood, Bronx, NYC. The woman collided with another car as she was turning on the Mosholu Parkway near Webster Ave. Rescuers had to remove the door of the car in order to save her. She was sent to the hospital in critical condition. The driver of the other car was also injured and transported to the hospital.

During the same day, a yellow cab went through a red light and hit another car. The impact sent one of the vehicles careening into a man who was crossing the street in a motorized wheelchair. The accident happened at the intersection of  103rd Street and Broadway in the Upper West Side. The man on the wheelchair flew into the air. He was inured but remained conscious.

Read more in the NY Daily News 

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21 year old Michael Messina was critically injured after being hit by a car in NYC early this morning. The young man was riding a scooter on Cooper Ave near 73rd Place in Glendale, Queens  around 3:45 am when a car traveling in the opposite direction veered into his lane and hit him.. The car then caught fire but the driver was able to escape safely. Messina was transported to the hospital in critical condition. The driver stayed at the scene of the accident where he was tested for alcohol. The breathalyzer showed 0.71 which is just below the legal limit of 0.8.  Read more in the NY Daily News

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location of the accidentA pedestrian was critically injured in New York after being hit and dragged half a block by a taxi on Thursday morning. 32 year old Meral Arisoy was on the sidewalk near the intersection of 8th Street and University Place in Greenwich Village when an out of control taxi crashed into a tree pot and then hit her. Her body got wedged under the car  and she was dragged down the University Place sidewalk for half a block before the taxi stopped. According to witnesses the taxi driver was speeding before he lost control of the vehicle. Read more in the NY Daily News

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Fatal pedestrian accident location

No pedestrian crossing at this intersection Picture: courtesy of Google map

A 45 year old man was fatally struck by a negligent driver who didn’t stop after he hit the victim. The car accident happened on 21st Street and 30th Road in Queens, NYC, yesterday around 11:00 pm. The man was transported to the hospital but he couldn’t be saved. The car that hit the pedestrian is believed to be a red Toyota. The police are looking for surveillance footage. The intersection is very dangerous because there is no pedestrian crossing even though it is located in a very busy area of Astoria. According to residents speeding is frequent.

Another accident happened a little bit later in the Bronx. A pedestrian suffered serious personal injury as he was trying to cross the Major Deegan Expressway near 138th in Port Morris shortly after 4:00 am. The victim was transported to the hospital while according to the NY Daily News a car was spotted at the scene of the accident with a smashed windshield and hood.

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Sunny MaritimeAt least 20 passengers suffered personal injury in a bus accident  in Upstate NY yesterday. The bus was operated by W&D Tour a Brooklyn based bus operator. It was transporting SUNY Maritime students from the Bronx, NYC. They were heading back to New York City after attending a conference  at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. Slippery road conditions due to earlier snow may have been a factor in the accident. The bus accident happened in the morning around 10:45 am on Route 28N  in Minerav, in the Adirondack Mountains, NY. The bus fell off the side of the road and landed upside down in the woods. 20 people suffered non life threatening injuries. Read more in the NY Daily News

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Decreasing the speed to reduce the number of car accidents resulting in death or serious injury in New York City is one of the top priorities of the Zero Vision Initiative launched by Mayor de Blasio in 2014.  Since November 7, 2014, the NYC’s default speed limit has been lowered from 30 mph to 25 mph and since that date the NYC Department of transportation has been implementing it. The DOT re-evaluated for each borough which streets should have their speed limit lowered to 25mph and which ones should be allowed to keep a 30 mph speed limit.  The DOT posted over 4,700 new 25 mph signs and removed 2,400 30 mph signs. There are still 700 more to be removed. At this point over 5,000 miles of NYC streets have a 25 mph or lower speed limit and over 800 miles of the streets have signs that explicitly indicate that the speed limit is 25 mph.  The DOT also added speed limits in the Vision Zero Map of traffic crashes. Read more in Streetblog

Manhattan Speed limit

 

 

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Two people died and dozen others were injured in an Amtrak train accident that happened between New York and Philadelphia  in the NorthEast Corridor yesterday morning. Train 89, also known as the Palmetto, struck a backhoe, killing the operator of the backhoe and an Amtrak supervisor.  The train had left New York for Savanah, GA around 6:00 am and was near Philadelphia when the accident happened.  None of the passengers died but more than 30 of them were transported to the hospital to be treated for non-life threatening injuries.

A team from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived yesterday at the site of the accident. They started to investigate the reasons why a maintenance crew was working on an active track. In a statement New York Senator Chuck Schumer indicated that it was highly possible that human error was the cause of the accident. He said that the Amtrak’s chairman, Mr Anthony Cosica told him that Amtrak employees have to follow a rigorous 20 step procedure to obtain clearance to place equipment on the track. Schumer added that a possible breakdown in communications between the train dispatchers and the maintenance crew may have been at the origin of the crash.