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.

Articles Tagged with New York Wrongful Death

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a 68 year old pedestrian died after being hit by a SUV in New York. The car accident happened last Thursday on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Andrea Kremen from Fort Lee (NJ) was crossing York Ave at East 78th Street in Manhatten when she was hit by a SUV. The SUV was making a right turn onto York. According to a witness the impact was so strong that the victim was thrown 70 yards away from the the initial impact. Witnesses rushed to help the woman before the FDNY arrived. She was bleeding heavily and was rushed to the hospital in cardiac arrest. She didn’t survive. Read more in the New York Daily News

Last year a total of 133 pedestrians died in car accidents in New York City compared to 139 in 2014. This is is the lowest number of pedestrians killed in traffics accidents in New York City in a year.  This decreasing trends in pedestrian fatalities in the city can be credited to the Vision Zero initiative launched in 2014 by the mayor de Blasio administration. The installations of speed cameras and the lowering of the city default speed limit are some of the measures that have helped in reducing the number of pedestrian deaths.

Safer street redesign by the DOT such as the creation of slow zones in residential neighborhoods, the redesign of many dangerous intersections in the city as well as the creation of arterial slow zones also  contributed to make streets safer for New-Yorkers.

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A 29 year old pedestrian died after being struck by a hit and run driver in New York on Friday night. The accident happened in Midtown Manhattan on the FDR Drive next to the 34th street exit. The police are still looking for the driver. The victim was transported to the hospital were he died. Read more in the NY Daily News

Last year from January to December NYPD  recorded 38,000 hit and run incidents. In 4,000 cases victims were left injured on  the road. In 48 cases the victims were severely injured or died in the accident. The police arrested 28 people who were related to these 48 cases (read more in Capital New York)

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howard Hersenhorn smallNew York Train Accident Lawyer Howard Hershenhorn  is representing one of the four victims who were killed when a sleeping engineer derailed a speeding train in the Bronx in 2013. He was recently quoted in a Lohud article related to this accident. Here is what he told the newspaper about the NTSB leniency toward William Rockefeller, the train operator:   “I think it’s an outrage that the NTSB gave him a pass because of the alleged undiagnosed sleep apnea, and his shift being changed. For God’s sakes, he’s a train operator.”

The article indicates that in the years before the fatal train accident, union members questioned the safety of  the Spuyten Duyvil curve and recommended installing a a system that automatically activates the brakes on a speeding train when an engineer is unresponsive but Metro-North never addressed their concern.

Read the complete article 

 

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The number of pedestrians injured or killed in a traffic accident in New York City over a period of 3 months reached a record low during the period of July, August and September 2015. 2186 pedestrians were injured during this period of time compared to 2270 during the same period of 2014 and 2710 during the same period of 2013. So far there were fewer pedestrians were injured in traffic accidents in 2015 than in 2014 or in 2013. 21 pedestrians died in a car accident this summer compared to 38 during the summer of 2014 and 39 during the summer of 2013.

Pedestrians injured and killed in New York City Traffic Accident over a trimester summer 2015
The number of people who suffered personal injury in a bicycle accident over a 3 month period reached a record high between July and September 2015 with a total of 1648 injuries compared to 1507 for the same period of 2014 and 1468 for the same period of 2013. More and more people are riding bicycles in New York City resulting in an increase in bicycle accident injuries. 8 people died in a bicycle accident this summer. This is the same as last summer. Over the year so far less people died in a bicycle accident in 2015 than in 2014.

Bicyclists injured and killed in New York City Bicycle Accident over a trimester summer 2015
The number of passengers injured in a car accident in NYC has been decreasing over the last 3 years and for every season. This summer, during the months of July, August and September 4121 passengers suffered personal injury in a car accident, compared to 5193 in 2014 and 5754 in 2014.  The number of passengers killed in a car accident during the warm season has been increasing every summer over the last 3 years in New York City. Between July and September 2015, 10 passengers died in a car accident in New York City compared to 9 for the same period of 2014 and 6 for the same period of 2013. So far more passengers died in a NYC car accident in 2015 than in 2014 or in 2013.

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776 pedestrians, 513 bicyclists, 1236 passengers and 1960 motorists suffered personal injury in motor vehicle accidents in New York City in September compared to respectively 714 pedestrians, 565 bicyclists, 1448 passengers and 2010 motorists in August and 751 pedestrians, 485 bicyclists, 1677 passengers and 1523 motorists in September 2014.

While the number of pedestrians injured in NYC traffic accidents  has been below 1000 since the beginning of 2014, the number of people injured in bicycle accidents stayed over 500 for the last 3 months. The number of motorists injured has also been unusually high and staying above 2000 for the last 3 months.

Personal injuries in motor vehicle accidents in NYC September 2015
4 pedestrians, 2 bicyclists, 2 passengers and 6 motorists died in motor vehicle accidents in September compared to 11 pedestrians, 3 bicyclists, 2 passengers and 5 motorists in August and 13 pedestrians, 1 bicyclist, 4 passengers and 8 motorists in September 2014. The Vision Zero Initiative is having a positive impact. Since the beginning of the year, it is the fourth month that the total monthly traffic fatalities are below 15. In 2014 it happened only twice and in 2013 the monthly number of people dying on New York City Streets never went below 15.

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Three pedestrians died in New York car accidents over the weekend after 8 others already died during the week. Two of the accidents happened on the Upper West Side (see previous blogs here and here) and the third one happened in Ozone Park, Queens where a 68 year old man was struck by a car (read more here).  Several people suffered serious personal injury in NYC this weekend as well. A bicyclist in his 60s was struck by a car Saturday morning around 10:30 am in Hollis Queens. A pedestrian suffered severe leg injury after being struck by a fire truck  at E. 15th St. and Irving Place in Manhattan on Saturday night.   (Read more in the NY Daily News)

These accidents happened shortly after Mayor de Blasio told journalists in a press conference that it had been a “very tough week” and that Vision Zero has “never been more necessary”. The mayor indicated that since zero vision was initiated the number of speeding tickets doubled  and the number of failure to yield tickets tripled.  (Read more in the Gothamist).

de Blasio

 

 

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An elderly pedestrian died after being struck by a taxi on The Upper West Side of Manhattan, NYC early Sunday morning. 88 year old Luisa Rosario, a beloved neighborhood figure, was starting to cross 109 street with the light and had the right of way when a taxi which turned right onto 109th Street from Columbus Ave hit her. The taxi driver, 73 year old Salifu Abubkar,  said he didn’t see the victim. He also told the police that he had been working non-stop for 16 hours.  He was charged with failure to yield.

Taxi drivers are prohibited by the Taxi and Limousine Commission to drive more than 12 hours straight and if they do so they may be issued a summons by the Commission.

Salifu Abubkar has been driving a cab for 30 years and had never had any serious accidents. Taxi drivers don’t have retirement pensions therefore if they don’t have any other source of income they are forced to continue to work.  Read more in the NY Daily News

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An 86 year old woman died after being struck by a car in Manhattan last Friday around 5:00 pm. The woman was crossing West End Ave near 64th Street on the Upper West Side when she was struck by a car. The driver remained at the scene of the accident while the victim was transported to the Hospital. The police are still investigating the accident.

The elderly woman was the 9th pedestrian to be killed last week in a car accident. Read more in the Gothamist

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Qualified and competent OSHA inspector OSHA construction site safety inspectors play a very important role in preventing  workers from being injured or dying on construction sites. Unfortunately with the recent boom in the construction business in New York City, these inspectors are very hard to find and their rates have been increasing significantly.

Certified Site safety inspectors have taken a safety course with OSHA and must meet specific criteria before receiving a OSHA certification. However these last years many  unscrupulous workers just blew off the classes and presented falsified OSHA cards to contractors in order to become site safety inspectors.

Since the beginning of the year the City has been cracking down on these workers.

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FullSizeRender (1)The recent construction boom in New York has lead to a significant increase of hard hats dying on construction sites. These deaths could have been prevented if safety measures were proprely implemented and workers better protected.  Among the workers who died this year, 9 fell because they weren’t proprely secured and several of them were crushed by improperly braced walls.

Unfortunately while the number of new construction sites has expanded significantly,  the number of available site-safety inspectors has dropped.  According to a Daily News investigation, there were 1,171 available inspectors in NYC in 2011 compared to 1,105 in 2014, a decrease of almost 6%.  During that same period of time building permits increased by 18% from 121,000 in 2011 to 142,000 in 2014.

According to the NY Daily News, the rarity of site-safety inspectors has led to a tremendous increase of their rates. Some of them are routinely jumping to better-paying jobs in the middle of ongoing projects to snag higher pay creating dangerous conditions because there is no continuity. Retired inspectors are also coming back on the market because of the high rates but they are often too old for the job and sit behind a desk instead of actively inspecting the construction site. In some cases, contractors used fake safety inspectors. Last year the city busted two contractors who had hired a cook, a hotel bellhop and a hairdresser to sign off on safety reports.