A New york Traffic Enforcement agent who died in a truck accident last week in Midtown Manhattan was eulogized by NYPD Commissioner Kelly at the funeral yesterday. Kalyanarat Ranasinghe, a 71 year old NYPD Traffic Agent was struck and killed by a vacuum truck as the truck driver was pulling away from a parking spot. Kelly said the traffic agent loved his job and had a calming effect on everyone he encountered.
Read more in the New york Daily News
In a car crash, the probability of sustaining serious personal injury or to die is much higher for drivers and car occupants if they are older adults. The number of drivers above 65 years old increased by 20% in 10 years. During that same time, the proportion of older drivers involved in deadly car accidents increased by 15%. To curb this alarming situation the NHTSA announced a new 5-Year Traffic Safety Plan and Guidelines for Older Drivers and Passengers
A previous NHTSA analysis of the personal injuries sustained by 18,000 occupants involved in a car accident shows that drivers over 75 have a higher risk of suffering personal injury than younger drivers especially when it comes to head, chest and legs and foot injuries. Statistics also show a much higher number of head and chest injuries for older car occupants involved in a side impact accident.
Intersection accidents are the most common car accidents older drivers make. In the most common cases they don’t notice potential conflicts or traffic signs and signals.
Wrongful deaths and serious personal injuries related to traffic accidents are epidemic in New York. The newly appointed NYPD commissioner, Bill Bratton, promised that this situation would change.
In a speech Thursday Bratton said “It is ironic that even as the death totals have declined dramatically with violent crime in this city, this year the number of people killed on our streets – pedestrian and traffic — will almost equal the homicide total”.
Bratton said his priorities are to make the streets and the subways safer.
Personal injuries related to decorating such as falling from a ladder, lacerations and back strains are the most common decorating injuries reported by emergency departments during the months of November and December.
There are about 250 injuries a day during the holiday season according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Additionally, Christmas trees are responsible for an average 200 fires every year with additional deaths, injuries and property loss.
If you don’t want to be part of the statistics and spend the holidays with your family instead of the hospital, the Consumer Product Safety Commission just published a list of safety tips on Ladders, Trees and Decorations, Candles, Lights and Fireplaces that is worth the reading.
A defective electrical component in Philips HeartStart defibrillators may fail to deliver a needed shock in case of emergency, warned the FDA yesterday. This safety alert by the FDA follows the recall by Philips of three models of its HeartStart devices in September 2012 due to an internal electrical malfunction.
The recall affects about 700,000 defibrillators sold between 2005 and 2012. The FDA recommends Customers who have received the affected devices contact Philips at 1-800-263-3342 to receive a replacement.
Doctors often fail to diagnose cancer in women with dense breast tissue because mammograms screenings are not reliable for women with this condition. Recent statistics and studies also show that women with dense breast tissue have a higher risk of developing breast cancer. Therefore advocacy groups have been pushing for legislation that requires doctors to report breast density to their patient. In New York, failure to inform a patient about dense breast tissue is now against the law and may support a claim of medical malpractice. The legislation was signed by Governor Cuomo on July 23 2012 and took effect last January. A total of 18 states have enacted dense breast notification laws, and 10 more have laws pending. Who is supposed to do the reporting and what they are supposed to tell patients varies from state to state.
In “Dense Breast Legislation in the United States: State of the States” published in the December issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology, Soudabeh Fazeli Dehkordy, MD, MPH, and Ruth C. Carlos, MD, MS, from the Department of Radiology at the University of Michigan School of Medicine in Ann Arbor provide a detailed review of the state of this law at states and federal level.
Personal injuries and wrongful deaths related to car accidents are much higher on Amsterdam Avenue in New York than on other northbound avenues on the Upper West Side according to CrashStat.Org. To protect pedestrians and bicyclists, yesterday night Community Board number 7 voted 35-0 with 5 abstentions for a resolution asking the Department of Transportation to perform a complete street study of Amsterdam Avenue with safer pedestrian crossings and a protected bike lane. (see StreetBlog.org)
Amsterdam Avenue is a four car lane avenue with synchronized lights. People driving in the city know that if they “time the lights right” they can go from 60th Street to 108th Street and hit a light just once “if they are lucky”. Therefore motorists tend to drive their car as if they were on a highway with little respect for the 30 mph speed limit. In a family friendly residential neighborhood such as the Upper West Side this situation is very unsafe and the CB7 vote indicates that locals want to change that.
Since 2008, New York City Department of Transportation has been developing a strategic plan called “Sustainable Streets” that encourages New York communities to redesign their streets to make them safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. In areas where streets have been redesigned, the number of injuries has declined and local businesses say their sales are up.
To prevent construction accidents on the current and upcoming construction projects on Manhattan’s West Side related to the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project, the newly created “West Side Safety Team” will focus on cranes and derricks, excavations, scaffolds and construction hoists at New Building, major alterations and demolition projects.
The Hudson Yard Redevelopment Project: after and before
Serious skin reactions medically known as Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS) and toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN), can occur at any time during Onfi treatment warns the Food and Drug Administration. According to the FDA, 6 cases have been identified in the US and 14 out of the US. Out of the 6 cases identified in the US 5 were children. All the cases resulted in hospitalization with one case of blindness and two deaths.
Read the FDA Safety Alert
Every drug with two names, brand name and generic name, is a medication error waiting to happen, writes Theresa Brown in her latest Opinion in The New York Times blog.
A system that would keep only the brand name with a “-G” appended at the end of the name for generic would make more sense and reduce confusion.
Read the complete opinion
New York Personal Injury Attorneys Blog