Munley Law Blog

Don’t Call it a Car “Accident”

Safety advocates are trying to change the way we talk about motor vehicle crashes.

Mark Rosekind, head of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration said that the term car “accident” implies that it was no one’s fault, it could not have been prevented or foreseen.

In reality, more than 90% of collisions are caused by driver error – drinking, distracted driving, speeding, and other risky behavior. Relatively few are true “accidents,” caused by uncontrollable situations like a mechanical malfunction, icy roads, or other factors.

So what difference does it make? Why does it matter what word we use to describe these incidents? Road fatalities are on the rise. Safety officials, lawmakers, and aggrieved families feel strongly that language reflects our attitudes, which affect policy. When the language we use implies that nothing could have been done to prevent a tragic “accident,” […]

Trucking Interests Use Zika Fears to Weaken Highway Safety

Last week, Congress passed measures that seriously threaten the safety of the driving public, though you probably didn’t hear about it.

The Senate passed a measure that allows truck drivers to work a total of 81.5  hours each week as part of a massive spending measure that will fund transportation, housing, military construction projects, the Veterans Administration, and Zika virus prevention. In the House, similar rules were added to the transportation and housing appropriations bill. Both bills prevent the enforcement of safety regulations that took effect in 2013, limiting truck drivers to 70-hour workweeks and requiring two nights of rest between workweeks.

These measures rolling back trucker rest rules have been fiercely opposed by safety advocates, and likely would not pass on their own as stand-alone bills. So, in a disturbing pattern, trucking interest groups have been passing these measures by tacking them onto “must-pass” […]

Distraction Blamed for Amtrak 188 Wreck

Last year, eight people were killed and more than 200 were injured in the derailment of Amtrak 188 near Philadelphia.

For nearly a year, investigators couldn’t determine what led to the tragic accident. The train’s engineer, Brendan Bostian, was known for his attention to safety. He was cleared of any suspicion that he may have been using a cell phone or that he may have been intoxicated at the time. Yet somehow, the train was traveling at more than twice the posted speed limit when it entered a sharp curve and derailed.

This week, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released the conclusion that radio reports of a nearby train that was struck by rocks distracted Bostian, who was likely concerned about the condition of the other train’s engineer or the possibility that there were people on the tracks. The distraction caused him to momentarily lose his bearings, […]

Medical Errors the 3rd Leading Cause of Death

A recent study from Johns Hopkins found that medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States, claiming more lives than any other medical condition except cancer and heart disease.

Unfortunately, this problem is kept out of the public eye because the CDC’s mortality statistics, which rely on death certificate data, don’t capture things like communication breakdowns or errors in judgment that can lead to a patient’s death. As a result, medical mistakes are under-reported. This new study, based on eight years of hospitalization records,  calls for a better way to track medical errors in order to better protect patients.

As personal injury lawyers, we know that there are seemingly endless numbers of things that can go wrong during a patient’s care. Missed or mistaken diagnosis, unnecessary procedures, poor communication, electronic medical record inconsistencies, prescription mishaps, and infection can all have tragic consequences. […]

“Textalyzer” Could Help Reduce Distracted Driving

Distracted driving, perhaps the biggest road safety scourge of the decade, is getting worse nationwide.

In Pennsylvania, for instance, distracted driving citations increased by 43% from 2014 to 2015; in our home of Lackawanna County, the number of distracted driving citations skyrocketed from 32 to 115, according to the Scranton Times-Tribune.

Last week, our own Dan Munley was quoted about a recent case in which a Lawrence County judge ruled that a person texting a distracted driver who then got into a crash could potentially be held accountable.

In order to combat this growing problem, some safety advocates have suggested that we begin viewing distracted driving the same way we view drunk driving.  While distracted driving does not involve the consumption of an intoxicating substance, distraction can impair your driving ability just as much as alcohol, and it is just as dangerous. […]