Thanksgiving Travel A Dangerous Time To Travel

It’s that time of year where we need to remind New Yorker’s of the dangers of Thanksgiving travel. This special family & friends holiday is a time to  celebrate. Travel during the Thanksgiving holiday, is a heavily traveled time, staying safe — especially if your planning on taking a road trip is so important.

New York City car accident lawyers, Ajlouny Injury Law, will be available this holiday to help people who have been seriously injured in a vehicle accidents. If you or a loved one have been hurt in a MVA (moving vehicle accident), speaking to a personal injury lawyer at the time of the accident can help protect your rights in a personal injury case.

This subject to some may be an uncomfortable subject and may damper the joy of such a festive holiday. That is not our objective. We take no joy in discussing such a frightening subject.  Our objective is tor remind drivers that the statistics have shown that Thanksgiving is a dangerous time to drive, According to the CDC, the nation’s death rate.

Thanksgiving is supposed to be a  happy holiday. It might be the nation’s deadliest, too.

Dangerous Time To Drive:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is again warning drivers to stay safe on Thanksgiving. And for good reason — no holiday leads to more deadly accidents.

According to the most recent data available from NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System, there were 764 crashes involving a fatality during Thanksgiving 2012. (About 400 of them involved motorists.) In comparison, there were 654 crashes involving a fatality during Christmas that year.

There were nearly 50,000 non-fatal car accidents that Thanksgiving holiday, too.

Our objective is to frankly remind New York Travelers this year that simple awareness & safety precautions can save your life. According to NHTSA, at least 40% of passengers killed that Thanksgiving were involved in crashes with drunk drivers, and about 60% of passengers weren’t wearing their safety belts.

Safety Precautions recommended bt the NHTSA:

• Check your tires
• Make sure your windshield wipers are working.
• Don’t rush on the roads to make it to a holiday event. (check the weather, road conditions, and traffic)
• Leave early, if necessary, and allow plenty of time to safely get to your destination.”
• Never drink and drive.
• Hands-free, no texting and driving.
• Think Safe New York & Have A Happy Thanksgiving Holiday.

Injured During Thanksgiving Holiday Travel? New York Car Accident Lawyer Ready To Give You Advice 24 Hours A Day!

Stop driving these Hondas right now

**Stop driving these Hondas right now, says regulator**

Honda Airbag Info Recall

Don’t take the risk. DO NOT DRIVE YOUR CAR THIS HOLIDAY.

10 deaths related. This is serious New York.

The models identified by NHTSA include: 2001-2002 Honda Civic, 2001-2002 Honda Accord, 2002-2003 Acura TL, 2002 Honda CR-V, 2002 Honda Odyssey, 2003 Acura CL, 2003 Honda Pilot.

http://ow.ly/zvcR301QAfT

UPDATE:

Takata Settles Airbag Suit, Averting Testimony by Its Chief

The airbag maker Takata has settled a lawsuit involving the injury and eventual death of a woman whose car crashed in 2014.

Takata, whose airbags has been linked to at least 14 other deaths and more than 100 injuries.

Takata’s airbags can rupture when they deploy in a crash, shooting metal fragments toward the driver or passengers. The defect has prompted 14 automakers to recall more than 60 million vehicles in the United States and millions more overseas.

Ms. Mincey was paralyzed from the neck down after the Takata airbag in her 2001 Honda Civic forcefully inflated after a collision on June 15, 2014. The airbag was among those recalled by Honda less than a week later.

Ms. Mincey alleged in her lawsuit, filed the following year, that Takata had knowingly designed and manufactured airbags that were defective and dangerous. She died in April at the age of 77 from complications from her quadriplegia.

“The matter has been resolved to the satisfaction of all parties,” Robert Rendine, a Takata spokesman, said on Friday.

$700K Awarded to passenger in three-car collision

Passenger awarded 700k for injuries, pain and suffering from rear end collision.

In the motor vehicle accident trial Agrest v. Murphy involving a three-car rear end collision that occurred in November 2013 in Staten Island. Alla Agrest, 47 year old was at a full stop when her car was struck from the rear, and she claimed she felt two impacts. Myriam Volpe, was driving the vehicle directly behind Agrest. John Murphy’s car was last in the chain. Each party maintaining that the other hit first and pushed their car into Agrest’s, but the jury found both equally at fault.

Alla Agrest claimed that she required anterior cervical discectomy (ACDF) and fusion surgery to repair herniation’s and other injuries to her neck as a result of the accident. The procedure removes a herniated or degenerative disc in the neck area of the spine, after which a bone graft is inserted to fuse together the bones above and below the disc space. Agrest also underwent arthroscopic surgery to her right knee.

The defendants all maintained that either the accident worsened chronic physical conditions, or that Agrest’s injuries were not that serious. The jury, however, saw thing differently and awarded Agrest a total of $700,000 in damages, including $500,000 for past pain and suffering. The trial ended this last week in Kings County Civil Term.

“The baloney in the sandwich, rear end crashes are a good percentage of the cases our law office picks up.  Anyone injured in a rear-end accident as the driver or passenger, caused by negligence deserves full compensation for their injuries and should discuss a legal claim with our law firm by calling at 718-233-3913 as soon as possible. says Paul Ajlouny, New York car accident attorney.

24 Hour Free Accident Advice: 718-233-3913

Serious injury can occur as cases in a rear-end accident:

• Fractures
• Traumatic brain injury (TBI)
• Loosing teeth
• Whiplash (neck injury)
• Back injuries
• Crushed limbs
• Internal Injuries
• Bruising or contusions
• Burns
• Spinal cord injury (SCI)

Getting rear ended can cause severe injuries in the chest, head, neck and spine. Whiplash being the most common injury sustained in a rear ended accident as a result of movement of the head forwards and then backwards very quickly.

There are about 1.7 million rear-end collisions on U.S. roadways each year. About 1,7000 people die in those collisions and another 500,000 are hurt. according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

In a report accompanying the recommendation, the NTSB pointed to a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration which found that 87 percent of rear-end collisions happened because the driver simply wasn’t paying attention to the road.

The NTSB said that cell phones and other non-driving related systems in cars contributed to that distraction.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) statistics:

• 23% of crashes are run-off-road/loss of control incidents
• 28% of crashes are rear-end collisions
• 9% of crashes were caused by bad lane changes

SOURCE: National Transportation Safety Board 

 

 

 

 

18-year-old Brooklyn man crashes car kills passanger

An 18-year-old Brooklyn man crashes his car, killing the passenger, trying to flee from police.

An Brooklyn teen man faces multiple charges after he crashed his car, killing the passenger, in attempts to flee from Bernards Township Police Wednesday evening, authorities say.

Shern Noel, of Pulaski Street, is charged with death By vehicular homicide, knowingly leaving the scene of a motor vehicle accident resulting in death, eluding police, aggravated assault, and endangering an injured victim.

The victim has not yet been identified.

It was around 8:57 p.m. when a Bernards Township patrol officer observed a 2013 Honda Accord with tinted windows parked in a Martinsville Road gas station with an expired New York tags.

The officer followed the driver, Noel, as he exited the parking lot.

“Once on Valley Road, the officer activated his emergency lights in an attempt to pull over the vehicle and it’s two occupants,” according to the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office. “As the patrol unit approached the vehicle defendant Noel accelerated attempting to flee the area.”

Additional patrol units were dispatched to search for the vehicle, which was found moments later parked in a cul-de-sac with the lights off. Once spotted, Noel fled at a high speed out of the cul-de-sac and his vehicle was found minutes later, crashed, on Stonehouse Road near Columbia Road.

The front seat passenger was ejected from the vehicle and pronounced dead on the scene. Noel fled the scene and was found in a wooded area by police. He was transported to an area hospital for a wrist injury.

.Police Persuits Crashes 2014

• A driver and passenger were killed after their vehicle crashed while fleeing police – Hempstead, NY. November 2, 20 14
• Driver decapitated after police chase in Brooklyn ends at the rear of a flatbed truck – Brooklyn, NY. Gowanus Expressway, June 25, 2014
• Teenage Driver Fleeing Police Kills 4-Year-Old Girl At Amsterdam & 97th – Upper West Side Manhattan, NY.June 4th, 2013

.Facts About Police Pursuits

On average…

• Crashes as a result of police chases and police response calls kill more than one person a day, and one-third of the people killed are innocent bystanders.

• On average, these crashes kill one officer every six weeks.

• According to a 2004 Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center analysis of nine years of national statistics [submitted on a voluntary basis], “One third of these pursuit fatalities occur to innocent bystanders.”

• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) gathers pursuit fatalities on a voluntary basis. A 2002 FBI Bulletin notes, “The absence of mandatory reporting hampers the government’s ability to track the actual number of deaths.” Under-reporting of pursuit fatalities still exists today. According to NHTSA, crashes as a result of police pursuits kill at least one person a day. Sometimes, it is more than one person a day. Of those killed, at least a third are innocent bystanders.

• PursuitSAFETY no longer uploads data from NHTSA, since the data is incomplete.

A police officer that engages in the pursuit of a motor vehicle participates in one of the most hazardous of all police duties. Pursuit has been vilified by plaintiff’s attorneys and the media as irresponsible, reckless and unnecessarily dangerous, while at the same time the practice is defended by police officers as necessary for the apprehension of many suspects that are unwilling to immediately yield to an officer’s signal to stop.

Police administrators are caught in the middle, wanting to provide essential options for their officers, while meeting their obligation to direct and control a potentially hazardous activity.  Read more by the Police Policy’s Studies Council.

police’s decision to chase at all.

Paul Ajlouny, New York car accident lawyer, offers some facts of his own on police car chases. “The NYPD instructs its officers, to weigh the dangers of a situation carefully before deciding to ensue a pursuit through crowded NYC streets. Pursue or  let the suspect get away?”

You’re shooting through New York streets in a 2,000-pound missile,” so you’ve got to have a pretty serious reason to do chase. Sadly, as seen across NY State police chases often end in serious injury or death.”, says Mr. Ajlouny. ”

Texting while driving

Texting while driving is a dangerous epidemic that plagues our county today. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), a car accident is 23 times more likely to happen when a driver is texting. 30 percent of all car crashes in the United States result from drivers who admit to texting right before the accident. What about the ones that don’t admit it.

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control, nine people are killed each day across the country in distracted-driving incidents.

Studies astonishingly found that texting while driving is more dangerous than driving with a blood alcohol level of .08 – the percentage almost every state uses to determine intoxication. Research at the Virginia Tech Driving Institute revealed: The minimum amount of time a driver is distracted from driving while texting is five seconds. At sixty miles an hour a car travels over one hundred yards in five seconds – the full length of a football field.”

According to New York car accident lawyer Paul Ajlouny, “The numbers of serious injury accidents caused by texting drivers has steadily risen every year. We get calls weekly from injured accident victims as a result of distracted driving — texting while driving which have increased the number of personal injury lawsuits we handle at our firm.”, says Mr.  Ajlouny.

In 2012 Marilyn Mattei and her sons were badly injured in a wreck, caused by another motorist who was texting. Ms. Mattei, 54, was driving northbound in her 2008 Ford Fusion with her sons in the passenger seats. Nicole Fischman, then 22, was southbound in her 2006 Honda Civic and lost control while texting.

She sideswiped a car, driven by Jeremiah Kohn, in the lane next to her and both vehicles veered over the median divider into the northbound lanes.

Kohn’s vehicle slammed head-on into the Matteis’ Fusion, which another vehicle then struck from behind.

Ms. Mattei suffered right-ankle and rib fractures and other injuries; Patrick Mattei, 24, suffered several finger fractures, along with chest and arm injuries; Ryan Mattei, 19, suffered a laceration through his eyebrow that required about 80 sutures to close, along with neck and back injuries, and Stephen Mattei, 22, suffered a right wrist fracture and other injuries.

Ms. Fischman, of Randolph, N.J., was cited for texting while driving, a violation.

The matter was recently settled at mediation for $600,000:

• $310,000 for Marilyn Mattei
• $210,000 for Patrick Mattei
• $45,000 for Ryan Mattei
• $35,000 for Stephen Mattei

In 2011 Gov. Andrew Cuomo, signed a law making the use a hand-held electronic device for texting while driving a primary traffic offense in New York.

The penalty for texting while driving was raised last year to five points from three points on offenders’ driver’s licenses.

Texting While Driving Statistics

• National Safety Council Estimates that at Least 1.6 Million Crashes Each Year Involve Drivers Using Cell Phones and Texting.
• Despite the risks, the majority of teen drivers ignore cell phone driving restrictions.
• Talking on a cell phone while driving can make a young driver’s reaction time as slow as that of a 70-year-old.
• 56% of teenagers admit to talking on their cell phones behind the wheel, while 13% admit to texting while driving. (Note: Because this information was given voluntarily by teens, actual cell phone use numbers may be much higher.)
• 40% of all American teens say they have been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a way that put people in danger.48% of young Americans from 12-17 say they’ve been in a car while the driver was texting.
• 52% of 16 and 17 year-old teen drivers confess to making and answering cell phone calls on the road. 34% admit to text messaging while driving. Teens themselves confirm that texting is their number one driving distraction.
• 11% of all drivers under the age of 20 involved in fatal crashes were reported as distracted at the time of the crash. This age group has the largest proportion of drivers who were distracted.
• 18% of injury crashes in 2010 were reported as distraction-affected crashes.
• Each year, 21% of fatal car crashes involving teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19 were the result of cell phone usage. This result has been expected to grow as much as 4% every year
• When asked about the impact of sending text messages or e-mails while driving, however, 25% of all drivers said it makes no difference (NHTSA).
• Of all cell phone related tasks – including talking, dialing, or reaching for the phone – texting while driving is the most dangerous.
• Teen drivers are four times more likely than adults to get into car crashes or near crash events directly related to talking on a cell phone or texting.
• A car driver dialing a cell phone is 2.8 times more likely to get into a crash than a non-distracted driver.
• A driver reaching for a cell phone or any other electronic device is 1.4 times more likely to experience a car crash.
• A car driver talking on their phone is 1.3 times more likely to get into an accident.
• A truck driver texting while driving is 23.2 times more likely to get into an accident than a trucker paying full attention to the road.
• A truck driver dialing a cell is 5.9 times more likely to crash.
• A trucker reaching for a phone or other device is 6.7 times more likely to experience a truck accident.
• For every 6 seconds of drive time, a driver sending or receiving a text message spends 4.6 of those seconds with their eyes off the road. This makes texting the most distracting of all cell phone related tasks.
• 20 percent of injury crashes in 2009 involved reports of distracted driving. (NHTSA).
• Of those killed in distracted-driving-related crashed, 995 involved reports of a cell phone as a distraction (18% of fatalities in distraction-related crashes). (NHTSA)
• In 2009, 5,474 people were killed in U.S. roadways and an estimated additional 448,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes that were reported to have involved distracted driving. (FARS and GES)
• The age group with the greatest proportion of distracted drivers was the under-20 age group – 16 percent of all drivers younger than 20 involved in fatal crashes were reported to have been distracted while driving. (NHTSA)
• Drivers who use hand-held devices are four times as likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves. (Source: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety)
• Deaths from distracted driving rose 28% from 2005 to 2008, at the same time text messaging rates skyrocketed from 1 million texts per month in 2001 up to a staggering 110 million per month in 2008.
• Handset ownership also ballooned-in 1999, only 33% of Americans had a cell phone, while in 2008, 91% had a cell phone. Presumably, increased ownership leads to increased in the car usage and an increase in the rate of distracted driving.
• 6% of US drivers, at any given time, are using a cell phone while behind the wheel. Though this figure has remained steady since 2005, usage has changed from talking while driving to the more dangerous texting while driving.
• Using a cell phone use while driving, whether it’s hand-held or hands-free, delays a driver’s reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent.
  – See more at: http://www.guardchild.com/distracted-driving-statistics/#sthash.WU5YO6T1.dpuf

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