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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To avoid truck accidents during the winter, it is essential that truck drivers know how to deal with skids. Skids occur usually on snowy or icy roads. Excessive speed, over braking, over steering, over acceleration are the main reason why a truck may skid. Therefore the best thing to do to avoid skids is to do everything smoothly and gently.

Another winter danger for truck drivers are the exhausts systems: exhausts leeks entering the cab can be deadly. Hundreds of truck drivers die every year in the USA of carbon monoxide poisoning.

To learn more on how truck drivers can deal with these winter related issues and avoid accidents check out the following video.

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In New York most drivers who killed or injured a pedestrian will not face charges. In its cover story the Village Voice looks at the recent cases of pedestrian accidents and at the measures that could be enacted to reduce these accidents.

Almost every day pedestrians are being struck by vehicles in NYC. On Monday a bronx woman was struck and killed by a bus while crossing Broadway and 74th Street in Jackson Heights around 6 p.m. Yesterday a man suffered serious injury after being struck by a commerical van in Elmhurst. The same day, a woman was injured after she was clipped by a taxi in midtown

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To help combat the epidemic of pedestrians who die or suffer serious personal injury in New York, Gale Brewer, the Borough President, submitted a list of the NYC 57 most dangerous crossings. This list include 96th street and Broadway where two pedestrians recently died as well as 17 other locations in uptown manhattan..

Read more in the New York Daily News

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9 year old Cooper Stock recently died after being struck by a taxi. His uncle, Barron Lerner in a column for the New York Times explains why he believes that reckless drivers should be treated as criminals just like drunk and drugged drivers. Lerner who is a professor of medicine and population health at New York University, is also the author of “One for the Road: Drunk Driving Since 1900” . Lerner compares reckless driving these days to drunk driving prior to 1980. He says that reckless driving “is poorly defined in the law, sometimes poorly investigated by police and almost never results in a criminal charge”.

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Electrocauter.jpgA recent study analysed all Medical Malpractice claims related to fires in the Operating Room that have been filed in the American Society of Anesthesiologists Closed Claims Database since 1985 and found that electrocauterization was responsible for 90% of the claims. The study “Operating Room Fires: A Closed Claims Analysis” was published in the Journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists” and led by Dr. Karen Domino, Professor & Vice Chair for Clinical Research Anesthesiology & Pain Medicine, Adjunct Professor, Neurological Surgery, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.

Electrocauterization or Electrocautery is a procedure that is used in surgery to burn unwanted or harmful tissues or to seal blood vessels to stop bleeding. During the procedure a surgeon uses heat conduction from a metal probe heated by electric current to burn the tissue.

The study found that most Electrocautery induced fires happen during monitored anesthesia care with open oxygen delivery for upper chest, neck and head procedures with plastic surgery procedures on the face accounting for more than half of them.

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Personal_Injury_Lawyer_Jerry_Katz.jpgOur Partner New York Car Accident Lawyer Jerry Katz obtained summary judgment on the issue of liability for a plaintiff in this “pedestrian struck by car” accident.

This action arises out of a pedestrian/vehicle accident which occurred on December 22, 2011 at approximately 11:00 p.m. at the intersection of First Avenue and East 68th Street, New York, NY. At that time, the plaintiff, a 76 year old woman, was crossing First Avenue in an eastbound direction with the traffic signal in her favor. There were six lanes of travel on First Avenue proceeding in a northbound direction. The plaintiff was struck by the defendants’ vehicle which was making a left turn from East 68th Street onto First Avenue while she was in the third lane. Therefore, the plaintiff had successfully crossed two lanes of traffic and was nearing the third lane when the defendants’ vehicle, which was making a left-hand turn from East 68th Street onto First Avenue to go north struck the plaintiff. The defendant driver admitted to the police and subsequently in his deposition that although his view of the crosswalk was unobstructed, he did not see the plaintiff until impact, and there was rain and a glare from the road obstructing his vision.

The plaintiff sustained a comminuted fracture of the left olecranon process and proximal ulna; posterior displacement of the proximal major fractured fragment; impacted fracture of the left radial head; joint effusion; extensive peri-articular soft tissue swelling; sub-articular cystic changes of the radial head requiring surgery on December 29, 2011 in the nature of an open reduction and internal fixation of the fracture with the insertion of a T7 reconstruction plate, compression screws, coronoid screw and a long home run screw and surgery on May 16, 2012 for the removal of the hardware from the left upper extremity.

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More than 35,000 potentially unrepaired trucks and buses could be putting New York road users at risk of dangerous accidents.

A recent audit by State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli found that The New York Department of Transportation is not doing enough to ensure that commercial bus and truck companies whose vehicles or drivers have been found to have violations serious enough to warrant their removal from services, are making timely repairs or corrections.

The audit looked at inspections conducted from September 2008 to 2012 and found that out of 448,842 inspections conducted 20% of them or 90,368 vehicles were cited for one or more out of service violations. 76,229 of them were out of service violations on vehicles (trucks or buses) and 21,417 on drivers.

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FMCSA.jpgTo prevent bus and truck accidents caused by negligent motor carriers the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration just published a final rule that addresses motor carrier management companies with a pattern of safety violations.

Starting February 21st 2014, the FMCSA will have the authority to “suspend or revoke the operating authority registration of for-hire motor carriers that show egregious disregard for safety compliance, permit persons who have shown egregious disregard for safety compliance to exercise controlling influence over their operations, or operate multiple entities under common control to conceal noncompliance with safety regulations“.

This new rule will prevent bus and truck operating companies that have been previously placed out of service to submit a new registration under a new name to continue operations or to avoid other negative consequences of non-compliant behavior including a poor safety history.

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Every year 850,000 people are injured by needles or other sharp medical devices that have not been discarded properly. Sharps is the medical term for any device with a sharp point that can puncture or cut the skin for example, needles, syringes, lancets, auto injectors, infusion sets or connection needles.

An estimated 9 million patients in the US have medical conditions such as diabetes, allergies, arthritis, cancer, hepatitis or AIDS and use sharps at home, at work, at school and also while traveling. These patients and their caregivers need to properly discard needles and other sharp devices to protect others from injuries and infections spreading such as Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and HIV.

The FDA estimates that 7 billion sharps are loosely discarded yearly in regular trash instead of being safely discarded in a dedicated container.