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Last week we posted a blog discussing the U.S. Department of Transportation proposal requiring seat belts in buses to attempt to reduce bus accident fatalities. Coincidentally, I'm in Japan on a tour bus equipped with a seat belt. In and of itself barely noteworthy, except that as we're about to enter a highway, the tour guide announced that everyone should put on their seatbelt. Apparently, in Japan wearing a seatbelt on a bus that is travelling on a highway is required. We're now buckled up on a bus taking us to a Ninja Museum. Supposedly there are real ninjas there, wearing pink day-glow outfits. My kids can't wait. Sayonara

Motorcoaches carry 750 million passengers annually in the U.S. An average of 19 motorcoach occupants are killed each year on U.S. roadways. Ejections account for seventy-eight percent of the fatalities in motorcoach rollover crashes and twenty-eight percent of the fatalities in non-rollover crashes. Wearing lap-shoulder belts on motorcoaches could reduce the risk for passengers of being killed in a rollover crash by 77 percent, primarily by preventing occupant ejection in a crash, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Motorcoach rollover crashes, while relatively rare, can cause a significant number of fatal or serious injuries in a single event. Citing these facts

In 1910, the City of New York began collecting data to determine traffic fatalities among NYC pedestrians. Nearly a century later, in 2009, pedestrian fatalities are at its lowest rate in New York City history, down by 35% from 2001. The New York City Department of Transportation is undertaking an ambitious task to reduce by half the number of traffic deaths by 2030, to do this, the agency has collected and analyzed data about the causes of traffic deaths and injuries and where they are happening, using this information to design better streets. This landmark study, Pedestrian Safety Action Plan, worked to identify the causes, common factors, and geographic distribution of over 7,000 pedestrian crashes in New York City. So far, the study has found that NYCs traffic fatality rate

Last summer Nassau County on Long Island initiated a red-light camera program, with cameras placed above intersections to videotape motor vehicles running red lights and making right turns on red without coming to a full stop. $50 tickets are then sent to the vehicles owners. In its first year the program has generated more that $10 million from nearly 260,000 violations 1 for every 5 county residents and more than $13 million is expected in the year 2010. However, although the purpose of the cameras is to reduce motor vehicle accidents by placing them at high-accident intersections, questions are being raised whether the cameras have been placed at high-traffic intersections instead. The legislation approving the red-light cameras required that a report analyzing the proper placement of the camera

Theyre a staple of toddlers birthday parties, childrens holiday parties and other seemingly carefree events. Your children take off their footwear and climb into the inflated bounce house and youre free from worry (and perhaps bother) for a few minutes. Or are you? If the allegations in California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr.s lawsuit against several companies involved in manufacturing children's bounce houses are correct, some of the inflatable structures contain unsafe amounts of lead in their vinyl covering. The main exposure pathway from the bounce house to the child is hand-to-mouth. Lead is transferred from the vinyl to a child's hand during play and then to the mouth. Testing done by the Center for the Environmental Health and the Attorney General's office reportedly found that some of the vinyl in the bounce houses contains lead levels that violate both federal and

The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and the Chair of the Governor's Traffic Safety Committee (GTSC) announced that preliminary crash data from 2009 indicates a more than six percent decrease in overall traffic fatalities, a more than seventeen percent decrease in motorcycle fatalities and a more than twenty-nine percent decrease in bicycle fatalities. Alcohol, however, was a contributing factor in 30 percent of all fatal crashes. Preliminary crash data for 2009 indicates the total number of traffic fatalities decreased from 1,224 in 2008 to 1,146 in 2009. Additionally, data from the DMV shows that in 2009 motorcycle fatalities went from 188 to 155, and bicycle fatalities went from 42 to 2

Devadas v. Niksarli, Index #: 107637/07, is an action for medical malpractice and lack of informed consent with respect to LASIK eye surgery. It was alleged that the defendant departed from the accepted standard of care for refractive surgeons inasmuch as the eye surgery was contraindicated in that at the time of the surgery the plaintiff suffered from forme fruste keratoconus, an early stage of keratoconus. Keratoconus is the non-inflammatory thinning and steepening of the cornea. The presence of forme fruste keratoconus weakens the corneal stroma and can lead to iatrogenic ectasia. (the word iatrogenic roughly translated means the doctor did it.) Ectasia, a bulging of the cornea, is also called iatrogenic ker