Cell phones, blue tooths and even T.V. sets are in almost every car on the road, these are all forms of distracted driving.  Cell phone manufacturers and auto manufacturers have developed devices that may help alleviate the problem of driving distraction. The issue is safety on the road. Distracted driving is a dangerous behavior that has caused and will cause more serious car accidents. Most people ignore the distraction while driving despite the known risk.  It is too late when they have a car accident.

A driver talking to a passenger is distracted.  When a driver is driving while using a cell phone, his vision and reaction time are compromised by the brain’s mental images of who he is talking to. He is cognitively distracted.

A University study, cited by David Teater, Senior Director of Transportation Strategic Initiatives for the National Safety Council states that by using magnetic resonance imagery (MRI), as much as 37 percent of the brain’s resources can be diverted from driving while conversing on a phone.

A single source can turn off a driver’s mental images and can let him turn his head and mind to the sound. One solution could be the use of a magnetic resonance device installed in cars that would measure brain activity. A driver would be warned once a distraction occurs. If the warning is ignored, the conversation would be terminated. In other words the call would disconnected.

Another suggestion is to require hands-free users to install devices that indicate their cellphone is engaged to other drivers on the road. These devices include several small, flashing, yellow warning lights that are visible from all sides. Law enforcement can act if the phone user is driving in a distracted manner. In this way, the people around can be warned to be cautious in the presence of these distracted drivers. This would also make it easier for police to enforce those no texting laws.

The release of new devices and gadgets will keep coming. As a personal injury attorney, I am not sure any of these are the real answer.  A total ban may be the only solution. Is this idea to close to Hal from 2001:A space odyssey? Are we that personally unresponsible as a society that we need this technology to restrict our use of cell phones and other gadgets while behind the wheel?

• loss of consciousness;
• dilated or unequal pupils;
• dizziness;
• vomiting;
• headache;
• body numbness;
• slow breathing rate; and
• paralysis

How many times has a dog with its’ head hanging out the window caught your eye?

A lot of people take their dog to the grocery store or on vacation. Is traveling with your dog dangerous? How can drivers ensure the safety of their dog and themselves while driving?

We commonly see cars with pets in the backseat, some are even on driver’s lap or passenger’s lap. Dogs ride with heads out the window or roaming freely inside the vehicle. The Director of Professional and Public Affairs at the American Veterinary Medical Association in Schaumburg, Illinois, Dr. Kimberly May, who has been a veterinarian since 1994, said that it is a big mistake to let pets roam freely in cars.

A crash can cause injury to the driver and his passenger. We wear seat belts for a reason. Unrestrained drivers and passengers are more likely to be injured in a car accident. What about an unrestrained dog? Dogs may suffer broken legs, broken ribs, eye injuries or be thrown out of the vehicle if there is a car accident. A dog on a driver’s lap may also distract the driver causing a serious car accident.

In order to be certain of your dog’s safety inside the car, here are some helpful tips:

1. The best way to restrain dogs is by using a good harness and a seatbelt – it is important to choose a good-quality and properly fitted harness.
2. Do not let dog’s head out of the window – once a restraint has been applied make sure that their heads are not hang out the window, since this would put them at greater risk of injury to their face.
3. Do not transport dogs in open truck beds – Dogs must be restrained in order not to be protected from serious injuries in case of a crash.
4. Do not leave dogs inside the vehicle unattended – it can be harmful and deadly to the dogs during warm weather.

Having a dog in the car can be fun but also dangerous. Remember to take the proper precautions to secure your dog. Make sure that the dog’s movement in tha car doesn’t make you a distracted driver. Ensuring the safety of dogs while riding will save the life of the dog and the people riding the vehicle.

• Poor judgment in making turns;
• Impaired vision;
• Memory;
• Attention;
• Decreasing physical ability.

My good friend Chris Davis, who is without a doubt the best accident attorney in Seattle, Washington, brought this to my attention about the dangers of daylight saving time. We all know what daylight saving is. We set clocks ahead one hour in spring and turning the clocks back one hour in fall. I always love gaining an hour and loosing one.  During this day, studies show that there are higher rates of heart attacks, traffic accidents and workplace injuries.

Daylight saving time impacts many other aspects in life.  This includes affecting people’s health.  Transitions into and out of DST can disturb people’s sleeping patterns which makes them more restless at night.  According to a study, heart attacks during the first week of DST usually increase.  It is because the loss of an hour’s sleep may make people more susceptible to an attack.

Another effect where many research reported is the increase of general/fatal crashes after time change in spring.  The main hypothesis is that time change in spring deprived people of one-hour sleep, which, in the short run, could induce drivers’ sleepiness or fatigue while driving.  When you’re tired you don’t pay much attention to your surroundings and are not as alert to danger.

A study from the University of British in Columbia showed a 17 percent increase in motor vehicle collisions due to sleep deprivation.  In addition, some other studies found that drivers’ alcohol-drinking or late-night driving behavior out of one extra hour during dusk possible attributed to the increase of fatal vehicle crashes.

On Sunday, March 11, 2012 at 2 a.m., Daylight Time begins in the United States.  It is very important to take extra efforts to prepare for a time change on your body’s natural rhythm.  Hopefully, the following tips could help you to easily adjust with the Daytime Savings Time:

• go to bed 10 to 15 minutes earlier a few nights before the time change and wake up 10 to 15 minutes earlier for a gradual ease into Daylight Saving Time
• don’t take a nap the Saturday afternoon before the Sunday time change, it will only exacerbate the problem
• get some sun first thing in the morning to help reset your body’s internal clock
• avoid evening light the day of the time change as well as the following Monday to further strengthen the reset

Let’s make sure this study is wrong for 2012 and there is a decrease in injury car accidents on Kentucky highways.

Most people become more forgetful as their age increases. We tend to forget important events (hopefully not an anniversary or a birthday), even significant information. A whole industry has evolved around this problem.  There are vitamins and food supplement that say they can improve memory. There are ongoing studies that are looking for the answers as to how to keep and boost our memories. The opposite problem exists for those who have been in serious injury car and truck accidents.  How do they forget?  Can it be possible to forget painful experiences?

Research shows that any pain lasting more than a few minutes leaves a trace in the nervous system. New research and developments in the study of the brain have developed a technique to help trauma patients wipe out unpleasant memories. A protein enzyme called PKMzeta has been found to be absolutely necessary for storing memory. Adding more of this protein in the brain can strengthen even faded memories. New linkages are held together by this protein enzyme when a memory is formed. Researchers found that by blocking PKMzeta activity, the unpleasant memory will cease to exist.

This leads to a whole set of questions that I am not sure I want to address. In the past, we couldn’t choose what to forget or remember. In the future we may have the power to make an alteration to our memories can be beneficial to those injured in accidents and have post traumatic stress syndrome.  Blocking these painful memories may allow those suffering from serious car accident victims to finally have a way of getting rid of the memories and painful nightmares. This will be life changing.

Twenty elite drivers from Kentucky are among the 1,235 newly inducted worldwide into the Circle of Honor as announced by UPS February 23, 2012. The Circle of Honor is an honorary organization for UPS drivers who have achieved 25 or more years of accident-free driving.

There are 5,842 active UPS drivers who are members of the Circle of Honor throughout the world. Kentucky is proud to have 101 active UPS drivers that are members of the Circle of Honor. Kentucky’s senior safe driver, who has 42 years of accident-free driving under his belt, is Cleveland Francis of Louisville. He is the fifth placer of best safe driving record among UPS’s 102, 000 drivers. Here is the list of Circle of Honor drivers in Kentucky.

In the company’s history, this number of new inductees is the largest increase in new members in a single year. Zachary Scott, president of UPS Ohio Valley District, is proud of these men and women. He stated, “To go at least a quarter century without an accident is a testament to the pride they take in their work and to the training they receive. My thanks go to all of them for the countless lives they’ve saved.”

UPS’s 102,000 drivers are among the safest on the roads. It records to have more than 3 billion miles a year and averaging less than one accident for every million miles driven. This is good proof that the company has given much importance to the safety and training of their drivers. UPS was founded in 1907, issued its first driver handbook in 1917 and began recognizing safe drivers in 1923. Last year, UPS invested $175 million on safety training and employs its own comprehensive driving course called “Space and Visibility” which will teach UPS drivers safe driving methods.

As a Kentucky personal injury attorney I applaud the efforts of UPS. We could all learn a lot from their efforts that have decreased the number of serious injury car accidents in Louisville and around the world. I am proud that they call Louisville home. With their stellar record our new drivers could learn something from the UPS program.

The Chicago Automobile Trade Association (CATA) launches The 2012 Chicago Auto Show which started February 10 and will go through February 19. Vehicle manufacturers displayed their latest and high-technology vehicle creation at this show.

During the show, GMC unveiled the new 2013 GMC Acadia crossover vehicle. It has all the latest technologies. It delivers higher level of technology with its new Color Touch radio with IntelliLink, touch-activated controls and color-touch navigation. The IntelliLink adds voice control and seamless smartphone integration. A GMC engineer explained that once you plug your smartphone in, Acadia’s computer system will “read incoming texts to you…so you don’t have to take your eyes off the road.” However, Joel Cooper, a University of Utah psychologist and research assistant professor specializing in distracted driving said that, “it doesn’t look good” and that “Cognitive distraction is not trivial”. This news sounds good for some who uses cell phones while driving and those who want to make their life easier. But does this invention really ensure safety?  The real question is will the distraction take our eyes off the road and cause serious car accidents?

We all that that studies have shown that hands-free devices are as dangerous as hand-held devices and it causes distraction if you are behind the wheel. Just the fact of having a conversation has been shown to distract a driver’s attention from the road. Driving with the use of hands-free devices can still cause the brain to multitask and is cognitively distracted. The use of a cell phone and even the use of hand-held or hands-free devices by drivers are banned in some States.

It has been a challenge to get people to understanding about the risks of talking on hands-free or handheld cell phones while driving. New technologies and inventions may be cool and make our lives easier in the fast lane. It allows is to conduct business during commutes as a Kentucky Personal Injury attorney I wonder whether it is worth the risk if there is even the slightest chance that this distraction would cause a serious injury car accident.  What do you think?

We live in Kentucky and know what a pothole can do to a car.  Potholes come in all sizes.  They might be a foot deep.  Most potholes are formed due to wear-and-tear and the weathering of roads.  Heavy traffic can aggravate the cracks and potholes in the road, making them more severe. This can go to the point that they are a danger that can cause car accidents, motorcycle accidents, bicycle accidents, and pedestrian accidents.

The size and depth of a pothole can vary substantially.  Even shallow potholes may cause an accident.  Tire blowouts, damage to the undercarriage of the car, loss of control due to the jarring, whiplash, muscle strains, or dental damage caused by severe jarring are some consequences of driving over a pothole.  Under some circumstances the municipality or property owner in charge of maintaining the pavement may be responsible for the injuries.

A case in point is a fatal accident that happened March 15, 2010, where a young wife and mother of two was killed by hitting a simple pothole.  The Fisher family was traveling home to South Carolina when their pickup truck neared the Georgia state line. They were traveling on a rough section of I-20.  A car traveling in front of their truck hit a pothole, sending a piece of concrete through the truck’s windshield on the passenger side, where Jo Maureen Fisher was sitting.  The chunk struck her in the head.  She tragically died the next day.  Today, the husband, John Fisher is a single dad trying to balance work with child care.  Almost a year after the accident, the family was paid by the state of Alabama $1 million. This is even though they had not sued the state.

This was indeed a tragic incident.  There would have been no life lost and a young family left without a mother if those potholes were repaired. This was a preventable accident.   We are hoping that local and state government will continually maintain the road in order to avoid such fatal pothole accidents.

Road Rage as is “an aggressive or angry behavior by a driver of an automobile or other motor vehicle.” We can encounter road rage anytime on the roadway.
We are all guilty of road rage at one time or another. Examples of road rage include:

• rude gestures (you know – flipping the bird)
• honking the horn
• unsafe or a threatening manner of driving
• making threats

These aggressive behaviors can lead to disputes with drivers, assaults and even car accidents which can a cause injury or death.

How can we avoid road rage accidents? Here are some tips that may help:

1. Be a responsible driver – It is vital to drive safely and courteously. Never block the passing lane, follow traffic rules, refrain from speeding and use your turn signals when needed.
2. Check local traffic conditions – road rage accidents can take place as traffic gets worse. If possible, allow enough time to get to your destination. It would be better to travel ahead in order to avoid rush hours on the road.
3. Do not drive if you are under the influence of alcohol or drugs – you are prone to accidents and you are more likely to cause trouble if you are not in your proper behavior.
4. Never drive when you are angry or depressed – conflicts like threat, yelling or assault may occur when an angry driver is triggered.
5. Respect other drivers on the road – Use your horn in an appropriate manner and if you have high beams on headlights, turn it off when there is oncoming traffic. Avoid distracting other drivers.
6. Focus on the road ahead and be aware of other drivers around you – if you see an aggressive driver, get out of his way as much as possible.
7. Avoid eye contact with aggressive drivers – exercise extreme caution when dealing with angry drivers. When dealing with an angry and at-fault road rage driver, it is important to be calm and contact the police.

Being involved in a road rage accident can be risky and even deadly. Always remember that it is better to avoid irritating another driver. You don’t know how badly their day has been. If you know someone who is a victim of road rage accident in Kentucky, tell them to contact a personal injury attorney for them to know and protect their legal rights against at-fault aggressive drivers.