The percentage of child passengers who die while riding unrestrained generally increases with age and is most pronounced among 13- and 14-year-olds regardless of seating position.

“Kids will always test the limits with their parents or caregivers, but there is no room for compromise when it comes to wearing a seat belt,” said NHTSA Administrator Dr. Mark Rosekind. “Sounding like a broken record can save your child’s life. Kids need constant reminders and this is one that can’t be skipped.”

The facts about Seat Belt safety among Teens don’t talk, they shout:

Out of any driving demographic, teen drivers are the least likely to buckle up. This despite having the highest accident rate out of any other driving demographic per 100,000 drivers.
Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for 15 to 20 year olds in the United States. The majority of these deaths involve unbuckled teens, drivers, and passengers.
Use of a seat belt is the single most effective means of reducing fatal and non-fatal injuries in motor vehicle accidents.
When employed, seat belts reduce the risk of fatal injury to front seat passengers by 45%.

Yet, despite these alarming statistics, teens continue to ignore the grim facts after they get a driver’s license or driver’s permit. According to a research poll taken by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, teens cited seat belts as being “potentially harmful” as their main reason not wearing them.

A recent series of NHTSA focus groups found seat belt use can fall by the wayside when shuttling kids to and from school and activities, when running short errands, or when parents are a bit worn down by the daily grind, which makes this campaign urgently important. It is important for Kids to be trained to Buckle Up at an early age . As parents, we need to lead by example and reinforce the message to make sure it sticks,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “This campaign urges parents to never give up until their kids buckle up.”
New York Child Car Seat Laws

Any child younger than four must ride in a federally approved child safety seat that’s properly secured by a safety belt or a universal child restraint anchorage system.
All children younger than 8 years old must be secured in a child safety seat restraint system. This includes safety seats, harness vests and booster seats attached via safety belts.
Any child younger than 4, but who weighs more than 40 pounds, may be secured in a booster seat with a lap and shoulder belt.
If all safety seats are occupied, a child who would normally require a booster seat should instead be secured by a lap belt
Every rider younger than 16 must use a seat belt.

Many kids already understand the seat belt safety laws . “Everybody’s parents teach them as children; first they do it for them, then the children pick it up and do it themselves.” said a 14 year old Dallas boy.

Seat belt laws prove effective. According to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) teens who reside in states with primary seat belt laws are 12% more likely to buckle up when driving, and 15% more likely when riding as passengers.

Please contact Sackstein Sackstein & Lee, LLP online or call us on our toll-free line at 516-248-2234 to be connected with one of our attorneys.

In a study published in a recent copy of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers reported that laws enacted to shield emergency room doctors from liability had no meaningful impact on the tests and procedures ordered or the types of services provided.

Insurance industry lobbyists have long argued that “tort reform,” i.e., laws limiting the ability of private individuals to sue for medical negligence, or setting recovery ceilings for medical malpractice, would reduce healthcare costs and improve the quality of care. A principal, recurring premise advanced by insurance providers was that doctors who feared being sued practiced “defensive medicine,” worrying more about potential legal action than the needs and health of the patient. This increased costs, they argued, because doctors ordered more tests and procedures to make certain they couldn’t be accused of negligence or malpractice.

In the study conducted by NEJM, researchers looked at emergency room data at nearly 1,200 hospitals between 1996 and 2012, including those in Texas, Georgia and South Carolina, where legislative enactments had dramatically restricted lawsuits against ER medical professionals. The statistics they gathered showed that doctors in those states behaved exactly as doctors in other states. They found no appreciable difference in the number of MRIs or CAT scans ordered in tort reform and non-tort reform states. Accordingly, the actual costs to insurance companies in tort reform states were indistinguishable from the costs in other states.

The NEJM study is, insurance industry critics say, just another indication that tort reform is an illusion. They allege, with factual support, that the real motive behind “tort reform” is a desire by insurance companies to improve their bottom line. They point to concrete evidence refuting a key assumption by insurance companies—that juries will, as a matter of course, award higher verdicts in personal injury cases. A Department of Justice study, however, found that the median jury award in a medical malpractice claim is $400,000, whereas the median award in a non-jury medical malpractice trial–$631,000.

It’s been a rough winter, weather-wise, in the northeast—snow, snow and more snow. Every night, there seems to be another report of a major pileup on a snowy highway.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there are nearly six million traffic accidents in the United States every year. About one in five—over 1.3 million—are caused in part or in full by adverse weather conditions. The weather condition most likely to lead to a traffic accident—precipitation, either in the form of snow, ice or rain—accounts for three out of every four weather-related traffic accidents. But other weather conditions also play a significant part. Here’s an overview.

On average, 74% of weather-impacted motor vehicle accidents occur on wet pavement. About half happen when it’s raining and only 31% during snowy conditions (17% happen on icy roads). That’s a little misleading, say authorities, because most parts of the country only have snowy conditions for two to three months of the year, at most.

One of the surprising statistics—researchers found that traffic accidents were less likely to be fatal in adverse weather conditions. Though weather contributed to 23% of all crashes, it was a factor in only 17% of fatal accidents. NHTSA personnel say that adverse weather conditions necessary lead to reduced speeds, especially on freeways and highways. As a result, when an accident occurs, the impact is not as great, reducing the risk of death or serious injury.

Contact Sackstein Sackstein & Lee, LLP

To set up an appointment with one of our experienced New York motor vehicle accident injury lawyers, contact our office online or call us toll free at 888-519-6400. Your first consultation is free of charge.

How Will Self Driving Cars Affect Personal Injury Law?

Imagine driving on the road, rushing to your job to make it to an important last-minute meeting. You have barely taken a few sips of your coffee, shifting all of your focus to making it to the office. At the four-way intersection a few blocks from your destination, you breathe easily knowing you have finally made it. At the red light, you are waiting patiently, calmly sipping the coffee that has already gone from hot to lukewarm. The light stays red, as you look ahead with a clear sight of the building of your office. Then-all of sudden-CRASH.

After a few minutes of shock, your body adjusts to the fact you were just involved in a rear-end accident. As you open the car door and step out to inspect the damage, you walk over to the offending vehicle to collect information. As you approach the other vehicle you realize no one is driving the car.

For a moment you begin to wonder if maybe the driver fled. Slowly, you notice that the car does not have any pedals, no emergency brake handle, not even a steering wheel. You walk to the front of the car and you recognize a familiar little Apple logo on the hood of the car that you’ve seen in many other places. It finally dawns on you: you have just been rear-ended by Apple’s new consumer product, on its way to pick up the owner.
So, who’s at fault?

The mad geniuses at Apple have been hard at work this year on an Apple-branded self-driving car. Dominating most of the mobile devices and computer industries, Apple’s next target is the automobile. Leading this venture for Apple is former Ford engineer Steve Zadesky, who brought in former Mercedes Benz Chief R&D Engineer Johann Jungwirth. This past year, Apple began its secret “Project Titan” initiative, which is widely believed by many industry analysts to be Apple’s automobile project. Per Breitbart.com, Apple has recruited at least 60 former Tesla employees by offering $250,000 starting bonuses and 60% pay raises to join the company. It’s full-steam ahead for the Cupertino-based company, as they compete with Google’s own rumored self-driving automobile project.

As the industry prepares for these two tech giants to shift their attention to cars, many are speculating how the dynamics of liability laws will change around these driverless-machines. The question of who will accept liability in an accident will become far more complicated. One thought is that Apple and Google are banking that their autonomous, self-driving ultra-safe vehicles will minimize accidents, allowing the companies to accept all liability. Google has been testing one of their autonomous cars in Mountain View, California, where one vehicle has already logged 10,000 miles. “We have not cited any Google self-driving cars,” said Sergeant Saul Jaeger, the press information officer at the Mountain View Police Department, to The Atlantic. Google representatives have already made statements regarding liability. “What we’ve been saying to the folks in the DMV, even in public session, for unmanned vehicles, we think the ticket should go to the company,” said Ron Medford, safety director for Google’s self-driving car program, and the former deputy administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

However, just how far are these companies willing to go when accepting liability? If Google or Apple were to sell 100,000 cars, should they really be legally responsible for every ticket or accident those vehicles are involved in? What company would ever take on that level of legal liability? Because these vehicles will automatically adhere to all traffic laws, including obeying speed limits and not crossing passing lines, the companies expect the number of accidents and lawsuits are likely to diminish. Companies believe that robots make for better drivers than humans, with ninety percent of today’s automobile accidents involving human error (per R&D Magazine). A potential downside to this route are costs. Bryant Walker Smith, professor of law and engineering at the Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia, said that as the burden of liability shifts more to manufacturers than consumers, “the manufacturers will have to pass those costs on to consumers.”

No matter what the pending regulations say, the laws will clear up as incidents begin to be heard in court. If there’s an accident that’s bad enough, no matter what the regulations say, it will wind up in court. This fascinating new area of law is still years away from becoming an issue, but the attorneys at Sackstein Sackstein & Lee, LLP will be here to protect you. We look forward to pioneering into this new realm of personal injury law in the coming decades.

The attorneys at Sackstein Sackstein & Lee, LLP will fight to protect your rights. To learn more about our firm, please contact us online or call us on our toll-free line at 516-248-2234 to be connected with one of our attorneys.