New York Personal Injury Attorneys BlogInvestigators in a car accident that resulted in the death of 27 year old Pamela Pimentel determined that when Hernan Vega crashed into the victim’s cab he was driving at a speed of 107 mph in a street in the Bronx, NYC. Additionally a blood exam showed that the driver’s alcohol level was .14 and that he was also high on marijuana and ketamine a powerful animal tranquilizer. In a pretrial hearing, Vega was slapped with two counts of second-degree vehicular manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and two counts of operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol. Read more in the NY Daily News
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A second pedestrian dies in the third hit and run in New York City in two days
38 year old Daniel Cabrera was trying to cross Broadway at W 225th street in Marble Hill, NYC, when he was hit by a driver who sped away and left him dying in the street. Daniel Cabrera is the second pedestrian to die in 3 hit and runs in two days. The deadly accident happened in a very dangerous area located North of the Manhattan bridge. The area is busy with pedestrians visiting stores and restaurants on both sides of Broadway and cars are often speeding. 450 speeding tickets have been issue in this area since the beginning of the year. The area is prone to accidents. 58 pedestrians were injured last year according to DOT statistics . Crashstat.org recorded 8 pedestrian deaths and dozens of personal injuries between 1995 and 2009. Read more in Streetblog
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A pedestrian died after being struck by a hit and run driver in Queens, NYC, on Sunday night, that’s the second hit an run in Queens in one day
A woman in her 2o’s was crossing the street at the intersection of 76th Street and Woodisde in Queens, New York City, on Sunday night when she was struck and killed by the driver of a box truck. The driver of the truck hit the victim as he was turning onto Woodside Avenue but he didn’t stop. He drove away leaving the woman to die in the street. A witness at the scene followed the box truck for a few blocks, stopped the driver and managed to hold him until the police arrived. The police arrested the driver, 27 year old Valentine Gonzalez and charged him with leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death and driving without a license. Earlier in the day in Queens another woman was struck by a hit and run driver (see previous post)
Read more on ABC7 website
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New York City Police release video of a hit and run driver who critically injured a pedestrian in Queens, NYC
A 63 year old woman suffered serious personal injury after she was hit by a hit and run driver who is still at large. The accident happened Sunday morning at 89th Avenue and 120th street in Queens, NYC. The driver hit the pedestrian at 89th Avenue and 120th Street in Queens, and sped off on 89th Ave. The police are still looking for the driver and have released the below video. The vehicle is a dark gray Nissan Pathfinder. The victim was taken to the hospital where she is in serious condition.
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A pedestrian died of massive head injury after being hit by a bus transporting a group of mentally handicapped adults through Brooklyn, New York City
Another pedestrian died in a bus accident this weekend in Brooklyn, NYC. 64 year old Martin Hernandez Tufino was caught under the front wheels of a Freightliner bus that hit him as he was in the crosswalk on Avenue M near Coney Island Ave in Midwood. The bus which was transporting handicapped people was making a right turn when he struck the victim. 12 people were on the bus. None of them were injured. Read more in the NY Daily News
The driver remained at the scene and the police said that he wasn’t expected to be charged. In his latest blog, Brad Aaron from Streetblog is questioning why the bus driver wouldn’t be charged as Tufino had presumably the right of way. Under the Right of way Law that took effect in August 2014 drivers who are injuring or killing pedestrians because they failed to yield are supposed to be charged with misdemeanor and punished by a fine or up to a month of jail.
Illustration: Streetblog
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An 83 year old pedestrian died after being struck by a car as he was crossing a busy avenue of Brooklyn, NYC
A 27 year old driver struck and killed an 83 year old pedestrian last Thursday night in Brooklyn, NYC. Isaak Trakhtenberg was trying to cross busy Pennsylvania Ave between Two Pines and Shroeders. He had already made it to the middle of the avenue and was standing on a concrete median that divides the southbound and the northbound lanes. He was hit by the car of the young driver as he stepped in the southbound lane. The driver stayed at the scene and wasn’t charged. The pedestrian was taken to the hospital where he died.
Picture source: Google
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To reduce the number of deaths and personal injuries related to truck accidents a group of road safety advocates petitioned the NHTSA to create a safety regulation that requires the use of truck crash avoidance technology
New 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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Superbug outbreaks related to duodenoscopes : hospital negligence or product liability ? And what is the FDA doing about it?
Since 2009, the FDA has been aware that duodenoscopes manufactured by Japanese companies Olympus, Pentax and Fujifilm have been at the origin of the spread of sometimes fatal spread of pathogens but did nothing to change the situation. Hospitals that faced such outbreaks began sterilizing the devices more rigorously and the transmission of dangerous disease stopped. Therefore, the suspicion was that the superbug outbreak happened because of medical malpractice during which the hospital staff didn’t respect the sterilization procedure. However for the first time on Thursday the FDA said that even hospitals that fully respected the sterilization process could have their devices infected by the superbug. However the FDA didn’t propose to improve the sterilization procedures. They only issued a “safety communication” warning healthcare providers that duodenoscopes’ “complex design” may impede effective sterilization. The problematic part is a movable “elevator” mechanism at the tip of the duodenoscope: Its moving parts have microscopic crevices where bodily fluids can remain after standard cleaning. The FDA and the manufacturers are aware of this deadly manufacturing flaw but the FDA didn’t require the manufacturers to improve their device either. Read more on Reuters
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The recent arrest of a New York Bus Driver who failed to yield and severely injured a 15 year old pedestrian angers the union
The Transport Workers Union says that the new law penalizing drivers who have injured or killed a pedestrian after they failed to yield should not apply to bus drivers and that it is supporting a proposed amendment in the City Council to exclude bus drivers from the law. This statement from the bus drivers Union follows the arrest last week of Francisco de Jesus, a bus driver who severely injured a 15 year old girl after he failed to yield and struck her in the crosswalk (see previous blog). The bus driver is facing fines of up to $250 or 30 days in jail. Vision Zero proponents believes the punishment is not excessive and should apply to all drivers including bus drivers. Read more in the New York Times
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How should hospitals deal with security to prevent their staff from being injured ?
Reports of medical staff suffering personal injury after being attacked by patients or patient’s visitors are on the rise. Recent cases of extreme violence such as one involving a 68 year old patient attacking nurses with a metallic bar that he pulled from a bed (see video) or the death of a prominent cardiologist at a Boston Hospital who was shot by a gunman last month have led hospitals to revisit their security policy.
Shootings in hospitals are not that common but violence against hospital staff is happening daily. Workers are being kicked, scratched, punched beaten and even sexually assaulted by patients. Emergency room and psychiatric nurses and other workers dealing with elderly patients are the most at risk of being assaulted and injured by a patient. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics hospital workers are five time more likely to be assaulted on their jobs than workers in other industries. Last year a study entitled “Incidence and Cost of Nurse Workplace Violence Perpetrated by Hospital Patients or Patient Visitors” and published by the Journal of Emergency Nursing indicates that in the last year 76% of nurses experienced violence (verbal abuse by patients, 54.2%; physical abuse by patients, 29.9%; verbal abuse by visitors, 32.9%; and physical abuse by visitors, 3.5%). Perpetrators were primarily white male patients, aged 26 to 35 years, who were confused or influenced by alcohol or drugs.
Hospitals have started to initiate various programs to train their staff on how to recognize and deescalate potentially violent situations but too little is being done to stop the assaults. According to a recent article, Epidemic of Violence against Health Care Workers Plagues Hospitals published in Scientific American, hospital administrators and the judicial system do little to prevent assaults by patients. The cost of violence prevention is small, however, when compared to the amount that hospitals lose in worker-compensation claims every year and in time off due to injury—roughly a third of which is patient-inflicted, according to OSHA statistics.
