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

Published on:

By

e-scooter-4496668_640Electric scooters have become extremely popular and New York City finally is implementing a first e-scooter share program in the Bronx (see previous blog). The e-scooter wave started around 2017 and researchers have been accumulating data worldwide for a few years that are allowing them to provide pertinent reviews on the risk of accidents and injuries related to e-scooters.

Yesterday, the Injury Prevention online section of the BMJ Journals released “Injury patterns and circumstances associated with electric scooter collisions: a scoping review”, an in depth study on e-scooter collisions and the resulting injuries conducted by Manish Toofany  (Faculty of Medicine, The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada), Sasha Mohsenian, (Faculty of Science, The University of British Columbia), Leona K Shum (Department of Emergency Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, The University of British Columbia) Herbert Chan and Jeffrey R. Brubacher (both part of the Department of Emergency Medicine, Faculty of Medicine The University of British Columbia and the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology & Evaluation (C2E2) in Vancouver).

The researchers were able to gather the materials that have been published worldwide about scooter collisions and their injuries during the previous years  to identify injury patterns such as cause, type, body location, and severity of the injury

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

NYC DOT scooter pilotThe NYC DOT recently announced that a new scooter pilot program is on the way but did not elaborate much as what will be done to prevent accidents and make the rides safe for users. In a recent press conference, the new DOT commissioner, Hank Gutman, just promised new dedicated bike lanes in the East Bronx to make the rides safer for scooter users and cyclists.

While it is exciting that commuters who have a long way to get to the closest train station can now benefit from such programs, it is important that these commuters can do so safely. Street safety activists believe that while encouraging New Yorkers not to use a car, the NYC DOT has been lagging behind in keeping cyclists and scooter users safe. Last year a record  number of people were killed or injured in bicycle accidents.

Scooter-share programs have now been launched in many cities all over the word. Every state has different regulations when it comes to safety  but they are not standardized like they are in some European countries. For example in Italy, a law requires all users of recreational scooters to use a helmet to reduce head injuries which are quite common in scooter accidents.

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

location of the van accidentSeven pedestrians including two children were injured in a wild car accident in Manhattan last week. The accident took place on the Upper East Side, on March 5th, a little before 9:00 am. The 66 year old driver of a van lost control of his vehicle, striking a car on Second Avenue between 50th and 51st Street. The car went flying into the dining shed of Crave Fishbar, totally destroying it, while the van struck a food stand, a scaffolding structure and a traffic light post. Because it was early morning, the dining shed was empty however two young pedestrians, one 5 year old and one 7 year old, were injured by flying debris from the dining shack. The owner of the fruit stand as well 3 other pedestrians were also injured when the van crashed. The occupants of the car were the most seriously injured however none of the injuries were life threatening.

The driver of the van might have suffered a medical episode according to some media or might have been driving while intoxicated according to other media. The investigation is still ongoing. He was identified as 66 year old Noman Ahmed, a delivery driver for the Long Island based company Mega Elevator Parts. According to the Gothamist, the driver has been working with  the company for 20 years and never had any other incident.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W9jMmQxeOI

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

In 2020, New York saw a record high in motorist (driver) deaths and bicycle injuries and deaths, a record low in pedestrian deaths and a much lower number of truck and bus accidents than usual. The Covid 19 crisis that lasted during most of 2020 had a significant impact on New Yorkers commuting habits around the city. Emptier streets have lead to reckless driving and as a result more deaths related to speed. A surge in bicycle accident injuries was also recorded as many New Yorkers are now using bicycles instead of riding the subway.

Surge in traffic accident deaths in NYC

Despite a slowdown in activity in the city , 239 people died in traffic accidents in New York City, compared to 214 in 2019, 199 in 2018, 209 in 2017, 223 in 2016, 235 in 2015, 250 in 2014 and 286 in 2013. The number of car accident deaths was almost back to the level it was when the Vision Zero program started. If it was not for a significant decrease in pedestrian deaths, the number of fatalities would have been over this level with all other categories of road users reaching record high number of fatalities.

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

accident scene2 young people died and 2 others were injured in a car crash on the Saw Mill Parkway near Yonkers, NY. Investigation is still ongoing as to what exactly happened but speed seems to be a factor. Previous to the accident, the group of teenagers had visited friends in several locations. They were heading South on the Saw Mill River Parkway around 12:45 am when the driver lost control of the vehicle and rolled over.  The accident occurred near the interchange with the Cross Country Parkway.

When the police and EMT arrived they found 17 year old Ali Alghaithi, a Manhattan resident, dead outside the vehicle.  17 year old Abdlwahab (Abdul) Abushaar was still alive  but he later died from his injuries. Two other teens, a 15 year old and an 18 year old were seriously injured and are still hospitalized.

Two of the teens were working together at a cellphone store in Manhattan.

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

workers on suspended scaffoldRepairing facades can be dangerous. Many construction workers died or were injured while repairing facades in New York  without counting the multiple close calls where workers find themselves dangling out of suspended scaffolds  like the worker in the below video who was lucky he could get back on. Sometimes workers are left dangling in the air until FDNY comes to the rescue.

The NYC DOT recorded 4 deaths and 61 injuries related to accidents during facade work since 2015 and recently released a worker alert to raise awareness about the danger of using a suspended scaffold to repair facades.

Here are a few steps that workers should follow to reduce the risk of accident when doing facade repair

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

colored-smokeA father to be died and his brother was injured after a homemade pyrotechnic device they were preparing for a gender party exploded in their garage on Sunday.

28 year old Christopher Pekny learned around Christmas that his girlfriend was pregnant. The couple had planned a gender reveal party on Sunday to announce that the baby was a boy. Christopher Pekny was in the garage with his brother Michael preparing the gender reveal device that was intended to explode in a cloud of colored powder. However the device exploded earlier than planned while the two brothers were setting it up. Christopher died and Michael was seriously injured in the knee by flying shrapnel.

Not much information is available  about the exact nature of the device only that it was in the shape of a pipe. Investigation as the nature of the explosive is still ongoing.

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

accident sceneA reckless unlicensed 18 year old driver, behind the wheel of a stolen car, blew a stop sign and crashed into another car, killing the passenger and seriously injuring the driver last week in Staten Island. He then fled on foot. The police found him later on. He was arrested and hit with multiple charges.

Last Tuesday night, around 6:15 pm, Shahzad and Krauzer Akund were driving their Mercedes-Benz East on Lambert Lane in Bulls Head, Staten Island, when they got T-Boned by a reckless driver who blew a stop sign. The driver who was driving a Honda completely destroyed the front of his vehicle and ran away on foot, leaving behind him the couple dying in the street.

When EMS arrived they found the couple in critical condition

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

location of the gas explosion accidentA  gas explosion injured 10 people including several children in the Bronx, NYC.

The explosion blasted a three story multi-family residence located at 1520 Paulding Avenue in Morris Park, yesterday afternoon around 3:30 pm.  A gas leak on the building’s second floor  seemed to have been at the origin of the explosion according to preliminary investigations.

A tenant who  was watching television on the first floor had all his windows blown out. His kitchen cabinets were thrown outside taking down the kitchen wall. Above him a mother and a baby were stuck on a balcony. The mother had to throw her baby down to her neighborgh before others helped her get down the balcony. Another mother and her two kids were stuck on the seconf floor. The blast was so powerful that even the window guards flew off and the front door of one of the appartment units got stuck in the power lines across the street.  The building looked like it had been devastated by a tornado.

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

502 construction workers were injured on NYC construction sites last year conpared to 596 in 2019 and 761 in 2018. The number of construction accident injuries in New York is at its lowest since 2015.  The COVID  lockdown and the global slowdown in the construction industry contributed to this decline.

More than half of the injuries occured on construction sites located in Manhattan (289) while Brooklyn sites had the second highest number of injured workers (107). Queens came third with 43 workers injured last year followed by the Bronx with 43 injuries. Only 2 workers were injured on Staten Island construction sites last year.

Except for Staten Island where injuries dropped from 25 in 2018 to almost none over the past two years, all boroughs saw a gradual decline of construction accident injuries. In Staten Island, 2 worker injuries were reported to the DOT in 2020 and 3 in 2019 compared to 25 in 2018. These numbers seem unusually low.

Continue reading →
  1. Pages:
  3. 1
  4. ...
  5. 26
  6. 27
  7. 28
  8. 29
  9. 30
  10. 31
  11. 32
  12. ...
  13. 150
Badges
Super Lawyers Best Lawyers Martindale-Hubbell
SEE NEW JERSEY DISCLAIMER PAGE- AWARD METHODOLOGY