The Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) provides the agency and other federal agencies with critically important incident and injury information. More than 34 million consumer product-related injuries were medically treated annually from 2004 through 2006. Of these injuries, it is estimated that more than 13 million sought treatment at U.S. emergency departments. Below are statistics from the 2007 NEISS Data Highlights showing Product Grouping/Estimated Number of Injuries: (more…)
In last month’s decision by the in Petrone v. Fernandez, 2008 WL 2669298, a Queens mail carrier injured her finger while jumping feet-first into her vehicle to avoid a rampaging Rottweiler. Plaintiff Melanie Petrone was making her rounds on the morning of May 9, 2005, when she observed an unleashed dog on the defendants’ lawn within several feet of her. She decided to “flag” the house, meaning that mail would not be delivered so long as an unleashed dog was present. Ms. Petrone turned and began to walk back to her mail vehicle. She then noticed that the dog had begun chasing her and had entered the street behind her. Ms. Petrone, slowed by arthritis, began to run to her vehicle. To elude the dog, Petrone jumped feet-first through the open window of her vehicle, allegedly sustaining an injury to her finger. (more…)
A report of the Federal Trade Commission, Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents: A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities, and Self-Regulation, finds that 44 major food and beverage marketers spent $1.6 billion to promote their products to children under 12 and adolescents ages 12 to 17 in the United States in 2006. The report finds that food advertising to youth is dominated by integrated advertising campaigns that combine traditional media, such as television, with previously unmeasured forms of marketing, such as packaging, in-store advertising, sweepstakes, and Internet. These campaigns often involve cross-promotion with a new movie or popular television program. (more…)
People go to hear live music for a good time, but it’s not unheard of for disaster in the form of personal injury or death to strike. For example, on February 20. 2003, fire erupted at a Great White concert fire killing 100 and injuring 180. The fire started when a spark from the band’s pyrotechnic gerbs display ignited the soundproofing foam insulation lining the walls of the concert club as Great White began their set. On march 25, 1990, an arsonist started a fire at an unlicensed social club in the Bronx, New York, called “Happy Land”, that killed 87 people, mostly ethnic Hondurans. Now you can add permanent eye damage from laser beams to the potential risks of concert-going.
Over 30 people, who attended an open air music festival near Moscow in early July, 2008, suffered eyesight damage that doctors fear could be permanent. (more…)
The tortuous history of New York Route 347 in Suffolk County and its troubles with the traffic impacts of low–density strip mall development has again come to the public fore due to some recent motor vehicle accidents. On July 30, 2008, a Lake Grove woman, Effatolsadat Ghozati, 66, was struck by car and killed while crossing westbound Route 347 near Hallock Road in Stony Brook, New York, on foot at around 10:25 P.M. On August 1, 2008, the front of a 2003 Ford van, going west on State Route 347, smashed into the side of a passenger bus that was heading east on 347 and was attempting to reach a driveway on the north side of the Smithtown bypass. 9 people, all occupants of the van, were injured, and a tenth passenger died after several days in the hospital. (more…)
A 14-year-old fell off the platform after the rotted wooden rubbing board at the edge of the platform gave way beneath him, launching him into the path of an incoming train. Fortunately, he pulled himself to safety just in time. A senior citizen was sitting in her vehicle when a piece of the rail from the elevated subway tracks plunged 30 feet and slammed into the roof of her car. The rail shattered her windshield, missing her head by centimeters. Another teen, 17 years old, had his shoe slip between the train and the platform. He successfully wrestled his foot out of the gap before he was dragged. (more…)
Beginning June 23, 2008, OSHA brought a dozen additional inspectors into New York City to conduct proactive inspections of high-rise construction sites, cranes, and other places, where fatalities and serious accidents have been occurring. In January through June of this year, 20 employees died in construction-related accidents. Perhaps the most notorious incidents involved the 2 crane collapses, one on March 10 and the other on May 30, in which not only employees were killed, but also non-workers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time were killed or injured, to say nothing about the extensive property damage sustained. (more…)
After hearing about Robert Novak’s accident this past week when his Corvette (with the top down) struck a pedestrian, we thought that it would be interesting to note some of the statistics contained in last month’s National Pedestrian Crash Report released by the National Center for Statistics and Analysis, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The report analyzed trends in pedestrian fatalities and police-reported motor vehicle crashes involving a pedesrian in the United States between 1997 and 2006. Pedestrian fatalities declined slowly between 1997 and 2006. However, while the probability of a pedestrian crash declined, the probability of a pedestrian fatality in a crash increased. (more…)
Syndicated columnist Robert Novak was involved in a motor vehicle accident yesterday when his black Chevrolet Corvette struck a pedestrian who was crossing a street while crossing with a “Walk” signal within a crosswalk. Novak did not stop at the scene of accident but continued driving. He claims that he did not realize what happened until he had traveled one block and a bicyclist stopped him to tell him he had struck someone. Luckily for the injured pedestrian, a bicyclist witnessed the accident and reportedly said that the pedestrian was splayed across Novak’s windshield. (more…)
Every online picture has a unique “Hash Value” that, once identified and collected, can be used to digitally match the same image anywhere else it is distributed. It is analagous to a fingerprint. As part of an undercover investigation, the New York State Attorney General’s office built a library of the Hash Values for images identified as being child pornography, enabling investigators to filter through tens of thousands of online files at a time, speedily identifying which Internet Service Providers were providing access to child pornography images. This led to five of the world’s largest Internet Service Providers (”ISPs”), AT&T, AOL, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint to reach an agreement with the New York State Attorney General’s office to shut down major sources of online child pornography. (more…)