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.
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Everyday around 150,000 vehicles travel on a Bronx bridge that was built in 1932 and that may be about to collapse. The bridge which is the connector carrying the northbound lanes of the Major Deegan Expressway over an abandoned subway track is the oldest bridge listed in the top 10 most traveled structurally deficient bridges in the State in a new report by the American Road and Transportation Builders .

The 9 other listed bridges are all in New York City: 1 is in Staten Island, six are in Brooklyn and two in Queens.

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Read more in the New York Daily News

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9 people suffered severe personal injury after a SUV crashed into a wall early this morning at 5:30 am at Exit 13 of the northbound New England Thruway in the Bronx, New York. The driver of the SUV, a Cadillac Escalade from a car service company, lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a wall. The passengers, five men and 3 women all their 20s and 30s were rushed to the hospital.

Read more on ABC website

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Pedestrian%20fatality%20rate.pngToday we are looking at fatal pedestrian and bicycle accidents in New York and in the US.This is part 3 of of our series on the Walking and Bicycling Alliance 2014 Benchmarking report.

Globally since 1980, the pedestrian fatality rate and the bicyclist fatality rate have been decreasing significantly in the US. In 1980, 8070 pedestrians and 965 cyclists died on the road compared to respectively 4432 and 677 in 2011. However while the absolute numbers dropped, the percentage of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities among all traffic fatalities increase from 12.6% in 1980 to 15.8% in 2011.

Pedestrians and cyclists who are 65 and older have a much higher risk to be involved in a fatal accident. Seniors represent 10% of pedestrians and 6% of cyclists but account for 19% of the pedestrian fatalities and 12% of the cyclists fatalities.

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Two men in their 20s riding on a bike were seriously injured after they were hit by a car in Astoria, Queens on Tuesday night around 7:00 am. Then early Wednesday around 5:00 am, a motorcycle collided with a car at the intersection of Union Turnpike and Woodhaven Blvd in Queens. The 31 year old man operating the motorcycle was rushed to the hospital in critical condition. The passenger, a 20 year old woman, as well as the car driver, a 26 year old man also suffered personal injury but were in stable condition.

As the spring is coming in New York, motorcycle enthusiasts are back on the road. Unfortunately this also means that motorcycle accidents are on the rise in the city. Last year in May there were 250 motorcycle accidents in the city during the month of May compared to 216 in April and 82 in February.

Motorcycle%20Accident%20in%20NYC.pngBecause motorcycles offer very little protection when a crash occurs, motorcycle operators are 35 times more likely to die on the road than car passengers with head injury being the leading cause of death in motorcycle accidents.

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New%20York%20Judge%20Robert%20Gerber.jpgThe GM restructuring plan approved by Judge Gerber in New York in 2009 protects the automaker from product liability lawsuits related to incidents that happened before July 10th 2009, the date when the restructuring agreement went into effect.

Yesterday GM filed a motion with the Federal Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York asking Judge Robert Gerber (picture), the United States Bankruptcy Court Judge from the Southern District of New York, who presided over the General Motors bankruptcy of June 2009, to explicitly enforce this plan by dismissing 54 cases.

The move may save GM a lot of money but it also carries some risks. A coalition of 8 class-action plaintiffs countered with a lawsuit in the same court seeking to void that part of the restructuring agreement and accusing General Motors of committing bankruptcy fraud by not disclosing potential liabilities from the faulty switch.

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Camilla’s 62 year old brother died as a result of a serious head injury that he sustained in a fall last night in New York. Mark Shand was in New York to attend the Faberge Big Egg Hunt auction at Sotheby’s, a fundraising event for his charity, the Elephant Family. According to the Daily News, after the event, Shand went to an after party at the Diamond Horseshoe Nightclub in the Paramount Hotel near Time Square. As he went out for a cigarette he slipped and hit his head against the pavement in front of the club. He died of his injury at the hospital Today.

Read more in the New York Daily News

Camilla Parker Bowles, the Dutchess of Cornwall and her brother Mark Shand

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the 2014 NYC Construction Codes include new enhanced standards to prepare buildings for extreme weather in the wake of Hurricane Sandy and the DOT is organizing training events to inform the industry professionals about these changes.

The seminar will provide an overview of the changes made to the NYC Construction Codes as part of the NYC Department of Buildings Code Revision process and by other local laws passed by The City Council in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, collectively known as the 2014 NYC Construction Codes.

These training events will be held during the months of April May and June in New York City. The complete schedule can be found here.

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Numerous bicyclists and pedestrians have been severely injured and several of them have lost their lives in traffic crashes along Mc Guiness Blvd in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The corridor nicknamed “Hipster Highway” is notorious for passenger vehicles and large trucks speeding. Two years ago a study by Transportation Alternatives showed that two thirds of cars and 62% of large trucks traveled over the 30 mph speed limit with a maximum speed reaching 50 mph for cars and 47 mph for big rigs.

Things should change and residents’ safety should improve by the end of this month as the 1.1 mile stretch of Mc Guiness Blvd between Bayard Street and Freeman Street will become the third arterial slow zone in New York City. New signage will be installed, traffic signals will be coordinated to reduce speeding and the NYPD will increase enforcement on the boulevard.

The creation of 25 arterial slow zones is part of the Zero Vision Action plan to reduce traffic fatalities in the city.

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To reduce injuries and fatalities related to traffic accidents in all NYC boroughs, the Vision Zero action plan rests on 4 pillars: Law Enforcement, Legislation, Street Design and Public Dialogue.

Involving the communities from the ground up by listening to their specific safety concerns and have the DOT and NYPD work with them to develop traffic safety plans is an important step in having New Yorkers in every borough embracing and promoting the message that traffic deaths are preventable.

7 Vision Zero Town Halls have already been held in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan and a few more are planned in May and June in the same boroughs as well as in Staten Island.

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This is part 2 of our series on the Walking and Bicycling Alliance 2014 Benchmarking report. Here are some figures we found interesting about pedestrians and bicyclists’ profiles.

Bicycle trips represent 1% of all trips taken in the US every year and walking trips 10.4%. While pedestrians are of all types of age, genders, income and ethnicity, bicyclists are mostly men and younger..

walk%20and%20bicycle%20trips%20by%20age.pngMost people walk or use their bike for a social or recreational reason however more and more people are using their bikes to go to work especially in large cities where the combined average share of commuters by bicycle and foot is significantly higher at nearly 6.1% (1.0% bicycling and 5.0% walking) compared to an average of 3.4% nationally.