An 88 year old man was severely injured in a bicycle accident yesterday afternoon in the Queens, NYC. The accident happened on 131st Street near Rockaway Blvd in South Ozone Park in the middle of the afternoon. A blue sedan hit the cyclist and sped away. The elderly man was taken to the hospital in critical conditions.
Read more in the NY Daily News
Parents can play a big role in helping their children become safe drivers and avoid being injured or killed in a car accident. Thursday April 28th at 1:00 PM CST, the National Safety Council is organizing a webinar during which Jessica Mirman, PhD, a behavioral scientist and researcher on the Center for Injury Research and Prevention HOP’s Teen Driver Safety Research team, will share her recent research on the effectiveness of TeenDrivingPlan, a prototype interactive web-based application to help parents more effectively supervise driving practice. Another speaker Kathy Bernstein, senior manager of Teen Driving Initiatives for the National Safety Council, will talk about DriveitHome– a new resource from the National Safety Council designed to support parents of newly licensed teens. Read more here
Since 1981, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has identified window blind cords as a cause of strangulation deaths among children under five but not much has been done by the industry to develop safety measures to mitigate this risk.
Recently Parents for Window Blind Safety, Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Kids in Danger, Public Citizen, U.S. PIRG, Independent Safety Consulting, Safety Behavior Analysis, Inc. and Onder, Shelton, O’Leary & Peterson joined together to petition the CPSC to create a rule that would ban new blinds with cords if the cords can’t be kept away from children.
Read more in FairWarning
The parents of Cooper Stock are outraged that the taxi driver who killed their son was only charged with a traffic violation. 9 year old Cooper Stock was crossing the street with his dad when a taxi making a left turn struck them. Cooper died and his father was injured (see previous post). The taxi driver was charged with failure to exercise due care. That charge carried a maximum penalty of 15 days in jail, a $750 fine, and a license suspension. Yesterday, however, the taxi driver was fined $580 and a six months suspension.
Read more in the New York Post
Attention parents, some Beech-Nut products may potentially be dangerous for your children and should be returned to the manufacturer for a refund. After a consumer found a small piece of glass in a jar Beech-Nut Stage 2 Sweet potato & Chicken, the manufacturer issued a voluntary recall of the product. The recalled product is in a 4oz glass jar marked “DEC 2016” and includes product numbers “12395750815” through “12395750821” on the cap. It bears the establishment number “P-68A” inside the USDA mark of inspection.
Hospital negligence can sometimes also happen outside of the hospital when a healthcare facility doesn’t proprely mitigate the risk of vehicular theft in front of its entrance. In a recent blog post, the Joint Commission is warning about reports of patients and other individuals who have been stealing ambulances, delivery vans, police cruisers snow plows and private cars that were left unoccupied and running in front of hospital entrances. According to the Joint Commission the risk is especially high for hospitals and healthcare facilities with a very active emergency department. Thieves are often patients who either are at the hospital under the supervision of a law enforcement agency, have substance abuse problems or mental health issues. Individuals with no links to the hospital or the patients have also been reported stealing unattended vehicles at hospital entrances. These types of incidents are extremely dangerous not only for the medical staff which can be injured when trying to stop the suspect or can be unwittingly kidnapped during the vehicle theft but also for pedestrians and road users who could be struck by a suspect attempting to flee.
The Joint Commission recommends that hospitals work with ambulance services, authorities as well as vendors and suppliers to make sure their vehicles are secured when left unattended in front of hospitals. Valet parking staff should receive specific training and security personnel should monitor locations where vehicles stop near entrances and exits. Signage reminding drivers to remove their keys from the ignition when their vehicles are unattended can also help mitigating the risk of vehicular theft.
7 people died in construction accidents in New York City since the beginning of the year. This is almost as many as during all of 2014 a year during which 8 fatal construction accidents were recorded. A 22 year old construction worker died on April 6th at a construction site where the restaurant Pastis used to be in the meatpacking district. The young worker was digging below the foundation of the building when dirt fell on him and buried him up to his neck. He was rushed to the hospital in critical condition and pronounced dead upon his arrival. A day later 4 construction workers suffered serious personal injury during an accident at a demolition site located at 331 Madison Avenue near 43rd street. A chandelier and a heavy marble banister collapsed on the workers after they fell from a height of about two stories while doing interior demolition. The week before a construction worker fell to his death in Brighton Beach. Two people—not workers—died after a suspicious explosion this week in an apartment building where plumbers were working on gas lines. In March a pedestrian died after being hit by a piece of plywood that detached from a construction site security fence . In February a construction worker installing grass on the Barclay Center in Brooklyn was crushed to death by falling beams and in January another worker fell to his death down an elevator shaft on the Upper West Side.
According to Crain’s New York, 19 people died in construction accidents in 2008 during the last real estate boom in New York City. When comparing the number of construction-related accidents and deaths in 2014 with 2008, the figures show that construction sites aren’t necessarily getting any safer. Though there has been a dramatic drop in deaths, from 19 in 2008 to eight in 2014, the number of accidents has spiked to 231 from 151 over the same time period, a jump of more than 50%. Last year, the city issued about 142,000 building permits, up 20% from 2008. Combined with the deaths-to-date this year, the potential for increasing construction activity “puts this year on track to be another fatal one,” Crain’s reported.
Picture: courtesy of Wikipedia
Two men suffered personal injury in a collision between a car and a motorcycle in the Bronx, NYC. The accident happened at the busy intersection of Baychester and Nereid. During the investigation the police discovered a bullet hole in the car which led them to suspect that the car driver may have ran a red light before the crash as he was fleeing the scene of a shooting that happened a few blocks away. Both the driver – who was shot – and the motorcycle driver were injured and rushed to the hospital.
Every year around 250,000 children visit the ER because they were injured at the playground. Broken bones as well as bruises and cuts are the most common injuries suffered by kids. Death can also happened in more rare cases. If you are bringing children to the playground the video below offers a few tips that can help you avoid dramatic outcomes.
Two men suffered severe personal injury in two separate accidents that happened in Brooklyn, NYC, on Sunday night. One of them was a 46 year old cyclist who crashed his bike into the back of an MTA bus in Williamsburg and the other one was a pedestrian who was struck by a car three hours later in Crown Heights. Both were transported to the hospital in critical condition.
Read more in the NY Daily News
New York Personal Injury Attorneys Blog