Houston Wrongful Death Lawyer Blog

Families entrust the care of their loved ones to nursing homes, assuming that they will be cared for and protected from injury. When an elderly or otherwise incapacitated individual suffers a wrongful death, family members will naturally be left wondering what went wrong and will want to hold the nursing care facility responsible for their negligence.

This is exactly the case for the family members of a 74-year-old woman who was living under the care of an assisted living facility. She had been living at the facility for six years. She suffered from schizophrenia, psychosis, short and long-term memory loss, and had a tendency to try to leave her whereabouts. She, along with her family members, relied on the nursing home for her well-being and safety. All of this was well-known to the nursing care facility.

As part of motorcycle safety awareness month, it is important to take a closer look at the number of serious injuries and fatal accidents that stem from motorcycle accidents.

Unfortunately, even though safety improvements have helped reduce serious and fatal car accidents, the same cannot be said for motorcycle crashes. In fact, nationwide fatal motorcycle accidents have been on the rise since 1997.

A study of national motorcycle accidents a few years ago revealed that almost all motorcycle crashes result in injury: 45 percent of which are serious injuries. Motorcycle riders, given how exposed they are to their external environment, are 34 times more likely to die in a motorcycle accident than are drivers and passengers in cars.

Safety advocates wonder if having a national helmet law would help decrease fatalities in the event of a motorcycle crash.

Last week we posted a blog about the importance of sharing the road with motorcycles, especially during national Motorcycle Safety Awareness month. Unfortunately, motorcycle accidents often have tragic consequences - resulting in life-long injuries or even death.

In Texas, the number of motorcycle fatalities has continued to increase. Between 1998 and 2008 the number of motorcycle deaths in Texas each year has more than tripled, from 153 to 535.

And each motorcycle accident results in a number of costs.

The most common type of motorcycle accident costs are medical: hospital bills, emergency response bills, rehabilitation costs. Medical expenses tend to be up to three times greater for motorcyclists injured while not wearing a helmet. While most medical costs accidents are not actually paid out of pocket by motorcyclists, they still pose a significant cost to the government, private insurers and taxpayers generally.

In the next few weeks you'll likely notice signs along major roadways proclaiming "share the road!" These signs are part of the month-long campaign in May celebrating national Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month.

The campaign serves as a reminder to all drivers to share the roads with motorcyclists in an effort to promote roadway safety and reduce motorcycle accidents. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), there were more than 4,500 fatal motorcycle accidents in 2010 - a number which has been increasing over the last decade.

As we mentioned in our last blog it is the 13th annual National Work Zone Awareness Week. The week began with the US Department of Transportation kicking off an event on Route 141 in Chesterfield, Missouri.

In Texas, the message "Don't Barrel Through Work Zones" is being reinforced a number of ways, including by providing several safety tips to drivers across the state of Texas.

We see the big orange barrels set up in the median and know the road we're traveling down is under construction. But how many of us reduce our speed significantly when driving through that work zone? Motorists should exercise extreme caution when driving through work zones at all times, but especially April 23-27, which is National Work Zone Awareness Week.

The reasons are many. Texas averages 15,000 motor vehicle accidents and more than 100 lives lost each year through work zone accidents. One in three of those accidents is a rear-end collision, usually meaning a driver was following too closely and/or not paying attention to the vehicle before him. Indeed, more than 3,000 of all the work zone accidents in Texas in 2010 were due to distracted driving and 14 people lost their lives as a result.

It may seem rather remarkable, given the attention paid to safety by automobile manufacturers, but defective products still manage to find their way onto the market and into the hands of buyers. In the 1970s Ford's Pinto had gas tanks that exploded upon impact. More recently, Audi and Toyota have had problems with unintended acceleration.

Since 1966 -- when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) arm of the Department of Transportation was first authorized to require automobile manufacturers to recall cars with serious safety defects -- more than 390 million cars, trucks and other motorized vehicles have been recalled by the NHTSA.

We've recently been writing about the increasing number of traffic fatalities due to distracted driving. In addition to the statistics we blogged about yesterday, a study recently found that distracted driving related accidents jumped from 4,563 in 1999 to 5,870 in 2008.

Across the nation, distracted driving awareness campaigns seem to focus on texting and handheld cell phone use, and while mobile device use is the largest distraction for drivers, it is not the only one.

Cell phone use aside, there are a number of other distractions that exist inside cars that can divert a driver's attention from the road and contribute to distracted driving car accidents. Those alternate distractions include eating, drinking, smoking, talking to other passengers, adjusting the car radio or using other electronic devices. According to experts, any distraction that lasts longer than two seconds can potentially become a deadly one.