Month:
June 8, 2015 / Personal Injury
Accidents Are Not Amusing
It’s a beautiful day. You and your family are out to enjoy yourselves at an amusement park. You feel great anticipation as you climb into the ride’s car. This will be exciting and fun! Unfortunately, perhaps it won’t. We’ve all heard the stories -- from the derailed roller coaster car that flew into a tree at a California park in 2014, to the woman who fell out of a roller coaster in Texas in 2013, to the story of the young woman who suffered amputation by a flying cable at nearby Kentucky Kingdom in 2007. At this point, you might be wondering if amusement parks are really that dangerous. Risky Rides Amusement parks are responsible for a surprising number of injuries. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has esti[...]
May 21, 2015 / Personal Injury
Young Workers in Danger
Youth at work may appear vigorous and strong, even invincible. We may even lament our own restrictions that occur with increasing age. Yet that same vibrant quality of youth can be a hindrance when it comes to occupational safety. Would you be surprised to learn that young workers, meaning those under 25, have higher occupational injury rates than older workers? It’s true. For workers under the age of 24 during 2012, there were 375 deaths, with 29 of them suffered by workers less than 18 years old. And during the years 1998 to 2007, younger workers were the victims of roughly twice as many nonfatal workplace injuries each year as workers 25 and over. Advantage: Maturity Being young is not always an advantage in the workplace. A person[...]
May 19, 2015 / Personal Injury
Dangerous Dust
Dust seems harmless, doesn’t it? Everyone breathes in dust every day. We joke about having dusty homes. And yet, dust that contains respirable crystalline silica can cause irreversible, chronic, and even fatal illnesses. Exposure to crystalline silica kills more than 250 U.S. citizens each year from silicosis alone, and approximately one million workers are exposed to crystalline silica. Workers in the construction and mining industries, as well as those who work in sandblasting, stonecutting, and even landscaping are among those at risk. Those who work at hydraulic fracturing (fracking) sites, or especially in frac sand mining, or who live near such mines, also face the potential of future illnesses. In Indiana, the risks from frackin[...]
May 15, 2015 / Vehicle Accidents
Binge Drinking: A Serious Problem Going from Bad to Worse
Binge drinking is on the rise in this country. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington reports that, since 2005, heavy drinking in the U.S. has gone up by 17.2%, and binge drinking has risen by 8.9%. And Indiana is no exception to this general rule. A Ball State report found that more than one-third of Indiana adults who drink admit to binging regularly on alcohol. Despite the way some comedians characterize drunken behavior as amusing, binge drinking is no laughing matter. It contributes to vehicular injuries and deaths, especially those of teens and young adults; it damages the health of drinkers; and it can harm families. It’s a sad situation all around. Defining Binge Drinking and DU[...]
April 29, 2015 / Personal Injury
Stage Collapse Spurs Questions
Dozens of high school kids and parents panicked on April 23, 2015, when part of a stage collapsed during a spirited musical, plunging Westfield High School performers into the orchestra pit. School Superintendent Mark Keen estimated the drop to be 12 feet to a concrete floor below. During the finale of the school's annual "American Pie" concert, which each year features music from one decade, a large group of singing, dancing students came from the wings onto a platform used to extend the stage area over the pit, a procedure used many times in the past without incident. This time, however, due to causes that are still under investigation, the flooring gave way. More than a dozen students were injured, with ten being transported to[...]
April 28, 2015 / Vehicle Accidents
Megaproblems with Megabus
Driving through work zones can be perilous (you'll find lots of information about work zone accidents on our website) -- but for some passengers traveling recently through an I-65 work zone on a double-decker Megabus, it was both scary and painful. On April 13, 2015, the Megabus was headed from Chicago to Atlanta when it approached a construction area. Although a state police car was present, with lights flashing, the bus driver ran into the rear of a semi, pushing it into an SUV and another car. Out of the 63 passengers on board, 19 were taken to one of three hospitals. Reports immediately following the incident said it was unknown whether mechanical problems with the bus contributed to the bus crash. Pattern of Double-Deck Bus Accide[...]
February 13, 2015 / Vehicle Accidents
The Latest Traffic Statistics: Good News And Bad News
For most of us, the word "statistics" just brings up visions of digits -- numbers, percentages, rates, ranks -- that, like beauty, are their own excuse for being. But the American Statistical Association (ASA) says, "Statistics is the science of learning from data, and of measuring, controlling, and communicating uncertainty; and it thereby provides the navigation essential for controlling the course of scientific and societal advances." It's this last phrase that makes the collection and study of data critical to our everyday lives -- for example, improving transportation safety. Jump To: The Good News or The Bad News One source of important highway data is NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System. To be included in the FARS census, a[...]
February 2, 2015 / Vehicle Accidents
Indiana in the Top 10
You can assign rankings to just about anything -- top ten places to retire, top ten basketball teams, top ten beaches, top ten polluted cities. Sometimes being in the Top Ten is a coveted position; other times it's something one would wish to avoid. Here's a Top Ten ranking that we're pleased to see: A new report from Advocates for Auto and Highway Safety includes Indiana as one of the top ten states which have passed laws to decrease the number of injuries and fatalities on the road. This is the twelfth year the group has issued an annual report, and the focus of this one is "lethal loopholes" -- that is, examining what laws have been passed and what laws haven't been but should be in order to reduce the number of preventable deaths an[...]
December 9, 2014 / Vehicle Accidents
12 Warning Signs Of Driving Deterioration
Alzheimer’s disease is a tragic eventuality for an ever-growing portion of our population. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, by the year 2060, the number of Americans with this disease or a related disorder could range from 11.3 million to 16 million. Caring for a loved one with cognitive impairments is difficult, and one of the most problematic situations that must ultimately be addressed is the inability of the person to continue to drive. Indeed, this determination must often be made for elderly people who don’t have mental disabilities; visual and auditory problems also contribute to unsafe driving. When dementia is present, who typically calls a halt to the individual’s ability to drive? Family members? Doctors? The [...]
December 5, 2014 / Vehicle Accidents
It’s True – Bridges Do Freeze Faster
If you ever doubted the veracity of those cautionary signs warning that bridges freeze before the roadway, just ask some of the folks on the roads around Indianapolis on December 2. Between 6 a.m. and 11 a.m., 243 accidents were reported, 42 of those being injury accidents, and officials noted that bridges and overpasses were particularly icy. Just 10 days earlier, ice on the I-275 bridge between Kentucky and Indiana caused the highway to be shut down in both directions after six cars and two trucks were involved in a crash there. Wintery weather is going to be with us for a while, and the nearly 19,000 bridges in Indiana are going to be treacherous. Here are things we all need to keep in mind as we travel across them. There are several r[...]