New York Personal Injury Attorneys BlogConstruction Accident Injuries are often catastrophic and the pain and suffering endured by the victims will last until the end of their life. In her recent blog for the Huffington Post “Astoria Characters; The Forgotten Hero”, Nancy Ruhling meets with Nick Pavlou, the construction worker who became known as the Hard-Hat Hero in October 1996 after he risked his life to save a woman’s and her son and granddaughter from a crane accident. His partner Paul Foti who was the crane operator died in the accident. Nick was crushed by the 6-ton boom and doctors thought he would never survive and if he would he could never be able to walk again. After 60 surgeries, Nick is alive and on good days he can walk for four blocks.But Nick’s life will never be the same again and the pain and suffering is present everyday..
19 injured in New York Subway Accident
19 people suffered personal injury after a Subway accident during which the F train derailed on a recently installed track near the Broadway and 65th St Station in Queens, NYC. 4 people were seriously injured and had to be taken to the hospital while another dozen of passengers were treated at the scene. 1000 people were on board.
Read more on the ABC News webiste
To prevent obesity and wrongful death related to drowning in New York City, the nonprofit Waterproofing program teaches hundreds of Bronx kids how to swim
Photo source: Asphalt Green
Unintentional drowning is the second leading cause of wrongful death among children under 14 and the drowning rate of African American children ages 5 to 14 is 3 times higher than the rate of Caucasian children of the same age. To prevent these type of accidents and also to fight child obesity, Asphalt Green’s Waterproofing, a non profit program, is teaching 427 children from six Bronx schools how to swim and the children love it.
Read more in The New York Daily News
10 year old pedestrian girl injured after being struck by a Police Car in Brooklyn, NYC
A young girl who was crossing Mother Gaston Blvd with her brother was injured after being struck by a police car yesterday night in Brooklyn. The 10 year old pedestrian Tajahnae Price was crossing Mother Gaston Blvd at New Lots Ave in Brownsville when the police car hit her. She went flying through the air and her top teeth were knocked out. She was transported to the Hospital and she is in stable condition.
Children are the most vulnerable pedestrians with middle school youth making up the bulk of injuries and fatalities related to pedestrian accidents involving children younger than 14 year old.
Read more in the New york Daily News
Troup of Acrobats from Ringling Bros Circus suffer serious personal injury after 35 foot fall
3 acrobats are in critical condition and 5 others suffered serious personal injury after surviving a 35 foot fall.
A defective clamp that was holding the troupe of acrobats dangling by their hair during a circus act broke and the artists fell to the ground. Read More in the NY Daily News
The accident happened in front of 3,900 people and was caught on camera by one of the spectators who uploaded it on Youtube. See video below.
A 9 year old girl died and five other people were injured in a car accident caused by a driver fleeing the scene of another accident in Brooklyn, NYC
9 year old Rebecca Ramnarine died and 5 other people suffered personal injury after a reckless driver crashed into the car that Rebecca was riding in with another 11 year old girl and a female driver in Brooklyn, NYC. A third car with 3 occupants was also involved in the crash. According to the media, the driver, 62 year old Kenneth Palache from Long Island, was fleeing the scene of another accident he was allegedly involved in. He ran a red light and crashed into the two other vehicles.
Palache had a suspended license and was arrested for criminally negligent homicide, leaving the scene of an accident and operating a vehicle without a license.
Hidden camera leads to charges of neglect against 17 employees of New York Nursing Home
8 nurses and 9 nursing assistants neglected to provide the most basic care to a disabled patient of a New York nursing home. A hidden camera placed in the room of a 56 year old resident disabled by a neurological disease shows that employees at the Highpointe on Michigan Health Care Facility in Buffalo failed to check on the resident and to dispense pain medication. They failed to give him liquids and they failed to perform incontinence care. The nurses and aids then falsified the documents to conceal their neglect.
Read more in the press release from Attorney General Eric Schneiderman
The Highpointe on Michigan Health Care facility has a below average overall rating of two stars on the Medicare ranking of nursing homes. It is interesting to notice that staffing is above average with 4 stars but health inspection is much below average with only one star.
New report highlights that, in New York, construction is the most dangerous industry and immigrant workers are the most at risk of a fatal accident; report also indicates that many injuries and deaths are preventable
A new report entitled “ It’s No Accident, Examining New York’s Workplace Deaths and the Construction Industry” and published by the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) looks at deaths related to construction accidents in New York.
The reports starts with a list of the names of the 23 construction workers who died on the job in New York last year before providing a comprehensive review of the recent construction fatalities. The report demonstrates that construction has the highest rate of fatality among all industries and that the majority of people dying on the job are immigrants. Age is also an important factor in construction site fatalities: 37% of the workers who died were above 55 year old. Statistics also show that a quarter of the construction workers who died were self employed.
Because there are only 71 OSHA Health and Safety Inspectors in New York State, it is impossible for OSHA to adequately enforce construction site safety standards. Adding to that OSHA penalties are so low that they are not an incentive for employers to make the workplace safer. In 66% of the construction sites that OSHA inspected there was at least one violation of a safety standard. This high prevalence of safety violations in the construction industry is an indicator that many injuries and deaths were preventable.
To reduce personal injury and death related to traffic accidents, New Yorkers can now report live any traffic issue in the city trough the new Vision Zero Interactive map
Vision Zero is asking pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists to pinpoint dangerous traffic areas in New York City on an interactive map that can be accessed online directly with an email address or through a Twitter or a Facebook account. Pedestrian crash corridors are highlighted in red on the map while all pedestrian fatalities that happened from 2009 till now are indicated by a red square. Unfortunately bicycle accident fatalities are missing on the map. New York road users can share, comment, agree on and pinpoint directly on the map the following type of traffic issues:
– Not enough time to cross – Double parking – Long wait to cross – Red light running – Jaywalking – Poor visibility – Speeding – Long distance to cross – Failure to yield – Cyclist behavior
It is a fantastic tool however there is a risk of distortion. The map was launched a few days ago and we can already see that high poverty areas are typically misrepresented. This can be due to language barriers, less access to technology or maybe less interest in current events. Hopefully Vision Zero workshops in these areas will be helpful in addressing this unbalance. The map shows big areas such as the West Bronx, East Brooklyn and Harlem with with very little activity compared to the rest of the city. Areas of the city where the youngest population live such as Downtown Manhattan and West Brooklyn are the most active areas on the map.
Crossing guards to be re-assigned at Junction Boulevard and the Horace Harding Expressway, a dangerous Queens intersection where more than 24 people were injured in traffic accidents since 2011
To reduce the number of pedestrians injured in traffic accidents and prevent traffic fatalities the 112th Precinct will assign crossing guards at the intersection of Junction Boulevard and the Horace Harding Expressway a dangerous NYC intersection just nearby PS 206, an elementary school.
This is good news for Senator Joseph Peralta who has been calling for crossing guards at the dangerous intersection for more than a year. The school and the parents are relieved.
Read more in the Queens Courrier
