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 Posted in Personal Injury

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10 pedestrians died and 1220 suffered personal injury  in traffic accidents last December bringing the total number of pedestrian deaths to 135  in 2014 compared to 168 in 2013 and 130 in 2014 according to car crashes data recently released by the NYPD.  The total number of pedestrians injured in vehicle accidents for 2014 was 11,000 compared to 11,978 the previous year, a decline of 8%. While pedestrian deaths are back around the level of 2012,  deaths as a result of a bicycle accident increased by 73% with 19 fatal bicycle accidents in 2014 compared to 11 in 2013. The number of people injured in a bicycle accident decreased by 2% with 3960 cyclists injured in 2014 compared to 4043 in 2014.

Globally New York City roads were less dangerous in 2014 than in 2013 with a total of 250 people dying in crashes in 2014 compared to 286 in 2013 – a decline of 12% – and 50,896 road users suffering personal injury in 2014 compared to 54,818 in 2013 – a decline of 7%.

new york traffic accident deaths 2013 2014new york traffic accident personal injuries 2013 2014
Even though pedestrian deaths and injuries decreased in 2014, the number of pedestrians suffering personal injury in a vehicle accident was above 1200 in December, the highest monthly number for the last two years. Monthly pedestrian deaths never went over 15 in 2014, an improvement compared to 2013, a year during which the monthly number of deaths jumped to 25 in November and 20 in January.

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A construction worker was seriously injured on a construction site in TriBeCa, downtown Manhattan. The worker was trying to unload a sheet of drywall from a stack when 3 of them toppled on to him. Three other workers had to hoist the sheet off of him. He was taken to the hospital in serious condition. The construction accident happened inside the sixth floor apartment of 60 Beach street, a luxury condo building. The workers’ company is Noranda Special Projects. Read more in DNA Info.

60 Beach Street

60 Beach Street, source: Google Map

 

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A high speed chase across the Verrazano Bridge and Staten Island, NYC, ended with 2 police officers suffering personal injury  in a car accident between the fugitive and the police. The fugitive, 41 year old Anthony Mazza had failed to appear to a sentencing for aggravated assault in New Jersey and was tracked by a US marshal fugitive task force.  The fugitive, 41 year old Anthony Mazza, was charged with eluding and assault on police for injuring the two officers in the cruiser.  A video shot from an helicopter shows a very dangerous high speed chase across the Verrazano Brige. Thankfully no civilians were injured but such a chase still raises questions about how far the police should go without seriously endangering  New York road users and pedestrians to catch a fugitive. Read more in the NY Daily News

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A 63 year old woman suffered serious personal injury after she was hit by a hit and run driver who is still at large. The accident happened Sunday morning at 89th Avenue and 120th street in Queens, NYC.  The driver hit the pedestrian at 89th Avenue and 120th Street in Queens, and sped off on 89th Ave. The police are still looking for the  driver and have released the below video. The vehicle is a dark gray Nissan Pathfinder. The victim was taken to the hospital where she is in serious condition.

 

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truck rear ends carNew technologies that can help prevent truck accidents such as  forward collision avoidance and mitigation braking (F-CAM) systems should be mandatory on all new big trucks and buses according to The Truck Safety Coalition, the Center for Auto Safety, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety and Road Safe America. These four lobbyists have sent a joint petition to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to ask the agency to start working on a regulation that would require manufacturers of big trucks and buses to equip all their new vehicles with forward collision avoidance and mitigation braking systems (F-CAM).  When a truck or a bus  is equipped with a Forward Collision Warning System, the driver is warned by a signal that he is getting too close to a “target” in front of him and if he doesn’t react, the Collision Mitigation Braking (CMB) will automatically apply the brakes  to reduce the impact speed or prevent the collision. The F-Cam system integrates both these technologies. This system has been studied by the NHTSA for a decade now. More recently the NHTSA also published a complete evaluation of the installation of F-Cam system on medium to heavy commercial vehicles that shows the benefits of such a system.

According the the most recent statistics, more than 100,000 people suffer personal injury in truck accidents and close to 4000 of them are dying every year. A large portion of these crashes are rear-end crashes in which the large truck is the striking vehicle that crashed into another vehicle on the roadway.  While every new manufacturer is proposing the F-Cam system on their new new trucks, only 3 % of the trucks on the road are equipped with it. Making this equipment mandatory seems to be the only way to achieve widespread implementation.  Download a PDF of the Petition for Rulemaking

 

 

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Reports of  medical staff suffering personal injury after being attacked by patients or patient’s visitors are on the rise.  Recent cases of extreme violence such as one involving a 68 year old patient attacking nurses with a metallic bar that he pulled from a bed (see video) or the death of a prominent cardiologist at a Boston Hospital who was shot by a gunman last month have led hospitals to revisit their security policy.

Shootings in hospitals are not that common but violence against hospital staff is happening daily. Workers are being kicked, scratched, punched beaten and even sexually assaulted by patients. Emergency room and psychiatric nurses and other workers dealing with elderly patients are the most at risk of being assaulted and injured by a patient. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics hospital workers are five time more likely to be assaulted on their jobs than workers in other industries.  Last year a study entitled “Incidence and Cost of Nurse Workplace Violence Perpetrated by Hospital Patients or Patient Visitors” and published by  the Journal of Emergency Nursing indicates that in the last year 76% of nurses experienced violence  (verbal abuse by patients, 54.2%; physical abuse by patients, 29.9%; verbal abuse by visitors, 32.9%; and physical abuse by visitors, 3.5%). Perpetrators were primarily white male patients, aged 26 to 35 years, who were confused or influenced by alcohol or drugs.

Hospitals have started to initiate various programs to train their staff on how to recognize and deescalate potentially violent situations but too little is being done to stop the assaults. According to a recent article, Epidemic of Violence against Health Care Workers Plagues Hospitals  published in Scientific American,  hospital administrators and the judicial system do little to prevent assaults by patients. The cost of violence prevention is small, however, when compared to the amount that hospitals lose in worker-compensation claims every year and in time off due to injury—roughly a third of which is patient-inflicted, according to OSHA statistics.

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On February 4th, around 11 pm, Marco Orellana was hit by a car on North Conduit Avenue near JFK airport. He was transported to the hospital in critical condition. The police announced yesterday  that the man died from his injuries on February 11th. The police also said that they were still investigating the accident. During the accident, The 32 year old driver first struck the pedestrian and then rear-ended a parked car. He stayed at the scene and wasn’t charged. Read more in NewsDay

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When a car accident occurs, some cars are safer than others and will  protect occupants from severe personal injury or death more effectively. The Buick encore and its cheaper version, the Chevrolet Trax just earned the Top Safety Pick award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. To qualify for Top Safety Pick a car  must earn a “good” or “acceptable” rating for small overlap protection and a “good” rating in the institute’s moderate overlap front, side, roof strength and head restraint crash tests. The 2015 Encore received the highest score (“good”) in the small overlap crash test compared to the 2014 model which was rated “poor” in the same test a year before. The small overlap test replicates a collision during which the front corner of a car hits another car or an object such as a light pole or a tree. Read more in the IIHS press release

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A 15 year old girl suffered a severe leg injury after she was hit by a New York MTA bus. The accident happened when the bus driver made a left turn from Union Ave to Grand Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC Friday morning. The young girl whose name is Jiahuan Xu was crossing the street in a crosswalk and had the right of way. She was struck by the bus and her left leg was pinned under the wheel of the bus for 15 minutes. The driver, 58 year old Francisco de Jesus was charged with failure to yield and failure to exercise due care. Failure to yield became a misdemeanor last year as part of the Vision Zero program to reduce traffic injuries and fatalities. The bus drivers union was upset with the charges and said that drivers should be exempt from criminal charges related to driving.

 

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A New York pedestrian is in critical condition after a driver slammed into him and tried to run away from the police. The 35 old man year old had just walked out of a Dehli and was crossing the road at Sherman Ave and Sickles Street in Manhattan when 42 year old Hector Mynaya sped down the street and crashed into the pedestrian. The driver sped away and went to hide in a nearby parking garage where the cops apprehended him.

Read more in the New York Post