The overall number of traffic fatalities during the first six months of 2011 decreased but not for 16-and 17-year-olds! Their number went up from 190 to 211. This is an 11 percent increase.  Deaths among 16-year-old drivers went up from 80 to 93 (a 16 percent rise). During that same period deaths among 17-year-olds rose from 110 to 118 (7 percent).  This was reported to be the first increase in eight years according to information from the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA).

Florida, Texas and North Carolina are among the states that have the most significant increases in teen fatalities.  There were 23 states that reported jumps in traffic deaths, 19 states had decreases and eight states plus the District of Columbia saw no change.

Author Allan Williams, formerly the chief scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said in a GHSA statement that, “While it is not a surprise that these numbers are stabilizing or slightly increasing, states should not accept these deaths as something that cannot be prevented.  More work can and should be done to save teen lives.”  He speculated that the increase may be due to the leveling off of initial benefits from ‘Graduated Driving Licensing laws.  The economy may also be a factor because, more teens are behind the wheel and thus increasing their risk for fatal accidents.

Barbara Harsha, GHSA executive director, believes that states need more federal help to save more teen lives.  The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the states should have funds to be put toward “distracted driving” campaigns directed at teen drivers who may be texting, phoning or simply carrying on with friends while driving.

As a personal injury attorney and a parent, I personally get involved in showing my teens safe driving habits. Distracted driving is 4 times more dangerous than drunk driving.  I prohibit them to any type of distractions while driving, especially electronic devices.  Texting and driving is an epidemic. Programs and campaigns that bring awareness to the dangerous associated with distracted driving will help. In my opinion, however it goes back to the parents. Our examples and rules prohibiting texting while driving will do more than any federally funded 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?

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.

This is a question I was asked on WAVE Listens a couple of months ago about what to do if you have been hurt in a car accident when you go to the doctor or hospital:

“My neighbor lady, she’s 85.  She’s from Germany.  Someone hit her yesterday evening and I’m taking her to the hospital here in about half an hour.  She’s refused an ambulance but she was hit so hard it knocked her hairnet off of her head.

What else I should do today for her?  I was going to take her to the hospital to be checked out.  She has a bad headache and she said it did throw her head forward really hard so we’re going to get her checked out to make sure she doesn’t have some whiplash and make sure she didn’t have any back injury out of it.”

It is important to make sure that she does understand the questions that are being posed to her since English is a second language.  It will be assumed that she understands any question she answers. She should not answer any question that she is unclear on.

It is very important that you tell her not to minimize her injuries.  We have a tendency when we go to the doctor to try to make things seem a little better than they really are.

Make sure she tells the doctor everything that’s been going on with her from the time she was in the accident up until that appointment. Whether it’s gone away or not gone away, such as the headache you spoke of, tell the doctor. If the headache goes away by the time you take her to the emergency room she should still state that she had a headache because that could indicate that she had a concussion or a closed head injury.

Another thing that is very important for her to tell the doctors is any other problems she’s ever had with her back, whether they were minimal or not. If the doctor asks her if she has been in prior accidents she should tell them about all prior accidents that she has been in whether or not she had been hurt or not hurt.

She should hold off until she’s feeling better to speak with the insurance adjuster or sign any paperwork. This will help make sure she has a clear head and has had a chance to speak with a personal injury attorney about her accident.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been prompted to review the safety of steroid injections into the epidural space near the spinal cord. These injections are used by Pain Management Doctors to relieve back and neck pain. There have been reports of severe and unexpected complications, including paralysis and death.  The chief of pain medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, James Rathmell, states the procedure is safe and only in a very rare event is there harsh complications caused by the shots.

Rollie Parrish is one of the rare cases to have suffered a stroke during the procedure. He was treated by a steroid shot to his neck to ease chronic pain in a hospital in Nederland, Texas.  Now, he’s nearly blind and in a wheelchair.  Another case involved Luciano Rolando who has received a shot of Kenalog in the lower back. Within hours of the injection, he experienced pain in his legs and loss of sensation when urinating.  And it’s not only them.  In a survey of physicians reported in the Journal Spine, there were 78 cases where patients who got shots in the neck, known as the cervical area of the upper spine, suffered serious injuries. There were 13 deaths.  Physicians were alarmed of these reported cases.

Interestingly, epidural injections were estimated to be as much as $300 billion a year industry!  As a Kentucky Personal Injury Attorney I know that epidural injections relieve pain and makes life better for the victims of car accidents.  Unfortunately, not all recipients are aware of the risks.  Ask your doctor what the risks are if you receive an epidural injection.  This way you can make an informed decision as to whether this treatment is best for you.

According to a recent report the United States could save 2,000 lives a year if all 50 states established comprehensive programs of phased-in privileges for young drivers. A report from the Allstate Foundation and the National Safety Council stated that an estimated 20 lives can be saved in Kentucky from the implementation of a more comprehension graduated driver licensing law.

Auto accidents are the leading cause of death among teens. Every State has a form of GDL, which rewards novice drivers with additional driving privileges as they gain experience and maturity. John Ulczycki of the National Safety Council and other experts say that the most effective GDL programs contain seven components.

The seven components are:

1. Minimum age 16 for a learner’s permit;
2. Six months before unsupervised driving;
3. Minimum 30 hours supervised driving during learner’s stage;
4. Intermediate licensing at 16 ½ minimum;
5. Intermediate nighttime driving restriction beginning no later than 10 p.m.;
6. No more than one non-family passenger for intermediate license holders;
7. Minimum age 17 for a full license

New York and Delaware are the only states that have programs with all seven components. In Kentucky, the GDL program includes:

a) A six month learning permit at age 16 that requires adult supervision;

b) A restriction on driving after midnight during the permit level;

c) A six point limit on traffic violations to age 18, with a penalty of license suspension; and

d) A four hour driving education class. Under the current National Highway Traffic Safety

Kentucky’s program no longer meets the minimum requirements for a full GDL program with seven components recommended by the National Safety Council.

This is an issue that Kentucky Lawmakers should consider. As a Kentucky Personal Injury Attorney and a father of a teenage daughter, I am concerned about the number of car crashes involving teen drivers. I agree that more lives and more money will be saved if GDL programs in Kentucky will be strengthened.  This is enhancements to the current law should defiantly be considered by Kentucky Law makers.

Kentucky accident victims should never hide the fact that they have prior injuries! They should not fail to disclose any fact for that matter. Their personal injury attorney should know everything there is to know about them, even more than their own mother. Dishonesty can destroy a case in a number of ways.  When your attorney and doctor know what’s going on, what your history is, they can react to it.  A plan that’s best for your car accident case can be developed.  If you hide an old injury from your doctor or attorney, it creates a lot of problems in the handling of your accident case and the outcome of the case.

One of the most common things accident victims do is fail to tell their attorney and their doctor about a prior accident that they were in. Along the same line is not telling them about being treated for a similar injury even if it was not from an accident.  At the very least this hurts your case.  First, because the doctor doesn’t know about the prior treatment, he’s not going be able to treat you properly.  The tests needed to properly evaluate your injury will not be ordered. Prior medical records will not be reviewed.

Also, should your accident case go to court and the insurance defense attorney asks your doctor the question, “Did you know about the accident that happened in 2002?”, and he says “No, my patient never told me about that”, it makes the doctor look like he wasn’t thorough. And even worse it makes it makes it look like you were being dishonest.  That you are a liar. The theory would be if you were dishonest about that, are you dishonest about something else that’s going in the case.

The insurance company will eventually have access to all of your medical records. They are going to discover if you have previously complained about neck pain or were in an auto accident 10 years ago. If a Kentucky accident victim tells their doctor and attorney this information at the beginning of the case it will have very little affect on the outcome of your case. On the other hand, if the insurance company finds it on their own it can significantly lower the amount you will receive in compensation. Honesty is the best policy!

Over 500,000 Large Truck and Commercial Vehicles were involved in accidents in the United States in 2010. Over 100,000 people sustained serious injuries in those accidents. Tragically over 5000 people died in these accidents according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Semi trucks referred to as “80,000-pound unguided missiles” by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, present a significant danger to all drivers and passengers on highways and roads in America. These risks are greater when truck drivers involve themselves in distracted driving or drowsy driving.

There have been many reported accidents caused by a distracted truck driver. One tragic incident happened in 2010 in Hart County, Kentucky.  The use of a cell phone brought about tragedy for a family and friends in a van. The National Transportation Safety Board (NSTB) during the investigation of the fatal accident found out that the truck driver had used his cell phone 69 times in the 24-hour period before the accident. This includes one phone call at the time of the accident. NTSB concluded that a distraction caused by using a cell phone led to the fatal accident.

The NTSB recommended that cell phone use, including talking on both hand-held and hands-free technologies, be banned for commercial drivers excluding emergency situations. Since the NTSB do not have the power to implement the ban, its recommendation could be a spring board for federal rule-making agencies and state legislators to act.

Authorities are also trying to make sure that truck drivers get enough rest so they won’t be fatigued while at work. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is in the final stage of changing the rules about hours-of-service regulations. At present, drivers have an allowable 11 driving hours in a day, changing this rule would limit drive time to 10 hours per day. The proposed rules mandate that drivers take at least 1 hour of break time during the day. Proposed modifications would also require drivers to include two overnight periods before their workweek would restart.

As a personal injury attorney, accidents involving semi trucks are often tragic and result in death, expensive medical bills or long-term rehabilitation. Both of these changes will defiantly save lives.

A blog posted by John Patzakis on the eDiscovery Law and Tech blog really caught my attention. The article discussed a case where an attorney and his client were both sanctioned for removing posts from the clients Facebook account. “A Virginia state judge ordered lawyer Matthew Murray to pay $522,000 for instructing his client to remove photos from his Facebook profile, and for his client to pay an additional $180,000 for obeying the instructions. According to the final order in Lester v. Allied Concrete Company.

Murray instructed his client to remove several photos on his Facebook account due to fear that they might prejudice his wrongful death case brought after his spouses’ fatal automobile accident. The instructions were made through Murray’s assistant. The assistant’s email to the client, Isaiah Lester, stated that, “We do not want blow ups of other pics at trial, so please, please clean up your Facebook and MySpace!” According to local press reports, Murray quit his job as managing partner of the largest personal firm in Virginia and he no longer practice law.

Facebook has now been widely used by lawyers, investigators, insurance company and even the police. Some information may serve as grounds for discovering cases of deceit that might win a case. An intentional hiding, altering or destroying of evidence relevant to a legal proceeding is considered spoliation of evidence. Parties who engage in spoliation may face legal consequences. In the situation of Murray, the case he handled costs him a large amount of money and ended his career.

As a personal injury attorney, everyone should be extremely careful as to what they post on social media sites. Their posts may do more harm than good. Once a post is made it is there forever!  Even if it is later removed there are ways to bring those posts back.  Education is the key to the proper use of Facebook.  I have told many accident victims who have came to me for their Kentucky accident case to never post anything that you would not be comfortable with their mother reading in the paper.  I guess that dates me, but you get the point.

Do you remember the ZZ Top song “Arrested While Driving While Blind”? It referred to driving while so drunk that you couldn’t see.  Today’s version might include a verse about texting and driving and how it makes you blind to the road. Controlling a motor vehicle requires 100% of one’s attention at ALL times! If you do anything that draws your attention away from driving it puts you and others at risk of death. Distracted driving remains a problem on Kentucky roads even though we know its risks and dangers. According to car safety experts, 40% of car accidents are caused by distracted driving. I know this is hard to believe, but distracted driving is more dangerous than drunk driving.

The most common distraction for drivers is the use of cell phones while behind the wheel.  In Kentucky, 192 collisions were reported in 2010 due to use of cell phones for talking or texting while driving. Despite the implementation of a texting ban in Kentucky and other States nationwide, there are still people using their cell phones and there are still reported cases of car accidents caused by texting while driving.

The Study made by the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University found out that brain power used while driving decreases by 40% when a driver listens to conversation or music. Driving while doing other things is just like driving blind. Watch this video produced by Cindy Speaker and you can really see the danger that distracted driving can cause you and the people around you.

As a personal injury attorney, it troubles me to see reports of victims, especially teens, involved in car crashes caused by distracted driving. Do people not realize that once they move attention away from driving, they are putting their own lives and the lives of innocent people at a huge danger? Texting can wait or unimportant text messages can ruin lives. A call and a text can wait until you have reached your destination. Don’t cause a serious car accident by Driving While Blind.