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 Truck Accidents

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NY Personal Injury Lawyers Rubinowitz and SaghirNew York Personal Injury Lawyer Ben Rubinowitz told the NY Daily News yesterday that the family of Marilyn Dershowitz, was “very pleased” with the verdict of Judge Sarah Netburn who ordered the government  to pay out a total of $4,646,548.15 to Dershowitz’s husband, Nathaniel. Rubinowitz said “they feel vindicated knowing Marilyn did nothing wrong and that indeed she was entirely free of fault” but while the money judgment is “a nice thing to have, they are very much aware it could never replace Marilyn. She was one of a kind. She was a tremendous woman. The loss is very real to them, every day of their lives.”

Marylin Dershowitz was riding her bicycle in downtown Manhattan with her husband when she was fatally struck by a  postal truck. Last month U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn found the federal government 100% liable for the fatal accident in a 72 page Opinion (see our previous blog).

Also see article in the New York Law Journal

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trcuck accidentTo keep the roads safe and prevent truck crashes that can result in serious personal injuries or deaths, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Compliance, Safety, and Accountability program identifies high-risk motor carriers for further investigations such as targeted roadside inspections and compliance reviews. However some recent high profile truck accidents have raised concern about the efficiency of this program and The Department of Transportation just announced that it will audit the investigative practices of The FMCSA for high risk motor carriers. This audit was initially requested by Senator Dick Durbin after a high risk motor carrier that the FMCSA had neglected to investigate was involved in a fatal truck accident.

Read more in Truckinginfo

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New York Truck accidentThankfully nobody was injured in a truck accident that happened Saturday at the site of  a new Memorial for Traffic Fatalities in Brooklyn, NYC. Activists for the group Right of Way were in the process of creating a huge mural depicting the silhouettes of the 264 people who died in traffic accidents in New York in 2014 when an 18-wheeler plowed into it.

Organizer Keegan Stephan was standing closest. The crash pulled parts of the plywood fence from its frame, and he said he and other volunteers who were wheat-pasting posters down the block had to jump back to avoid being struck. The driver could have done worse. “Fortunately he just hit a wall,” Stephan said. “If someone had been standing there that person would be dead.”

Read more in the NY Daily News and in the Gothamist and see video below for more info about the accident (at 1:40 min) and about the Memorial for people killed in traffic accidents in New York City in 20014

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Three people were severely injured after a sedan crashed into the rear of a tractor trailer in Brooklyn, New York Saturday around 4:15 am. Officials said the car was going down Flatbush Ave at 110 miles-per-hour when the driver lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a Walgreens truck near Kings Highway in Flatlands. The crash was so violent that the BMW was completely destroyed. 3 people were rushed to the hospital in critical condition and another person suffered minor injury. Read more in the NY Daily News

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Our partners, New York personal injury lawyers Ben Rubinowitz and Peter Sagir represented the family of Marilyn Dershowitz, a retired Manhattan Supreme Court special referee who died in a bicycle accident during which she was hit by a postal tractor trailer truck.  Following a two-week bench trial in February U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn found the federal government 100% liable for the fatal accident in a 72 page Opinion.

The accident happened on Saturday July 2, 2011. Marylin and her husband Nathan Dershowitz of Dershowitz, Eiger & Adelson, and the brother of Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz,  were riding their bikes on West 29th street between Ninth and Tenth Ave in Manhattan, New York. Both were wearing a helmet. As they rode under an overpass connecting two US postal mail facilities, the road was narrowed by a protruding Postal Trailer that was perpendicularly parked at a dock. As Mrs Dershowitz was about to ride her bike in the narrower side way, just behind her another postal trailer, driven by Ian Clement, was competing with a silver minivan to get in first in the narrower roadway as  due to the parallel parked trailers to the south and the protruding perpendicular Postal Trailer to the north, cars were not able to travel side-by-side. The postal trailer got in before the minivan but he didn’t see the cyclist and hit her as he was veering to the right to be able to fit into the roadway.

Southern District Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn ruled Wednesday that the federal government was 100 percent liable for the accident. Netburn said “a preponderance of the credible evidence” showed that Clement’s driving and the placement of a postal trailer protruding into the street were the “sole, proximate cause of the decedent’s injuries. Mrs. Dershowitz was not contributorily negligent.”

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Dangerous IntersectionA tractor trailer fatally hit a young man who was crossing a street in the Bronx, NYC, Tuesday night. The truck accident happened around 10.20 pm. 20 year old Kenny Valette was crossing Webster Ave near E. 174 Street when he was struck by a large truck that was making a right turn from the Cross Bronx Expressway exit ramp. The drivers remained at the scene while Valette was transported to the hospital where he died from his injuries. Read more in the NY Daily News.

According to NYCcrashmapper.com, 1 pedestrian, 11 passengers and 3 vehicle drivers suffered personal injury in 29 collisions that took place  at the intersection of East 174 street and Webster Ave between August 2011 and February 2014. As shown in the Heat map this intersection is very dangerous.

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truck rear ends carNew technologies that can help prevent truck accidents such as  forward collision avoidance and mitigation braking (F-CAM) systems should be mandatory on all new big trucks and buses according to The Truck Safety Coalition, the Center for Auto Safety, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety and Road Safe America. These four lobbyists have sent a joint petition to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to ask the agency to start working on a regulation that would require manufacturers of big trucks and buses to equip all their new vehicles with forward collision avoidance and mitigation braking systems (F-CAM).  When a truck or a bus  is equipped with a Forward Collision Warning System, the driver is warned by a signal that he is getting too close to a “target” in front of him and if he doesn’t react, the Collision Mitigation Braking (CMB) will automatically apply the brakes  to reduce the impact speed or prevent the collision. The F-Cam system integrates both these technologies. This system has been studied by the NHTSA for a decade now. More recently the NHTSA also published a complete evaluation of the installation of F-Cam system on medium to heavy commercial vehicles that shows the benefits of such a system.

According the the most recent statistics, more than 100,000 people suffer personal injury in truck accidents and close to 4000 of them are dying every year. A large portion of these crashes are rear-end crashes in which the large truck is the striking vehicle that crashed into another vehicle on the roadway.  While every new manufacturer is proposing the F-Cam system on their new new trucks, only 3 % of the trucks on the road are equipped with it. Making this equipment mandatory seems to be the only way to achieve widespread implementation.  Download a PDF of the Petition for Rulemaking

 

 

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truck%20inspection.jpgRoadside inspections can be effective at reducing the number of large truck accidents. However police officers are often reluctant to do it because they are concerned about the safety of pulling the truck over or because they do not understand the documentation involved.

To solve to this issue the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance have put together a national program to train officers on safely conducting truck and bus stops, properly verifying documentation and being familiar will all violation types.

The program will be launched on February 17th.

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The FMSCA just announced that Mexican carriers interested in long-haul operation can now submit applications to provide delivery across the border. This announcement marks a new milestone in the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. It follows a 3 year pilot program requested by Congress to demonstrate that Mexican carriers can operate safely in the US.
Read more in Trucking Info

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truck%20brake.jpgTruck accidents related to brake failures, brakes out of adjustment, or other related brake problems represent almost 30% of all truck accidents on US roads according to statistics from the DOT. Many of these accidents could be be prevented by proper truck maintenance.

Inspections conducted at a national level during a Brake Safety Week resulted in 16.2% of 13,305 trucks inspected being taken out of service. With an estimated 15.5 million trucks operating in the US this means that approximately 2.5 million trucks in the US are operating with brake problems… A pretty scary number!

Read the complete article in TruckingInfo

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