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Lawmakers and public safety advocates hope 2010 will be a safer year on our nation’s roads and highways, with more states adopting laws like the one in Maryland that prohibits texting while driving. For anyone who hasn’t jumped on board the wireless communications bullet train — texting is typing and sending “text messages” using a cell phone, Blackberry, or other hand-held device.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that despite advances in wireless communications, “Greater sophistication in these technologies may present greater physical and cognitive challenges for drivers than traditional information sources.” Texting while driving is considered by many states including Maryland to be a form of “distracted driving” that can lead to serious and fatal traffic accidents.

Maryland Ban on Text Messaging While Driving

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With the holiday season in full swing, everyone is scrambling. There’s last-minute shopping, preparing for holiday parties and feasts, wrapping up year-end projects at work — and increased travel by air, rail, and road. Unfortunately, drunk driving car accidents are also part of the holiday picture in Maryland and around the country.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced that state law enforcement across the country will be cracking down on drunk drivers this holiday season, with the “Over the Limit, Under Arrest” campaign. People who overindulge in alcohol at family gatherings, work parties, New Year’s Eve celebrations, and other holiday get-togethers pose a risk of serious personal injury (including debilitating brain or spine injury) or death to themselves and others. Nationally, 13,470 people were killed in 2006 in alcohol-related traffic accidents.

Maryland Drunk Driving Statistics and Holiday Traffic Accidents

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Maryland injury lawyers who assist families in nursing home abuse and neglect cases hear some sad and maddening stories of harm — or even murder — befalling seniors in the care of retirement facilities.

When most people in Maryland think about nursing home abuse, they usually suspect elder care staff as the most likely culprits. But the elderly residents themselves may also abuse their fellow senior citizens — or worse. A chilling news story reported out of the Boston area last week focuses on the strangulation death of a grandmother who had recently celebrated her 100th birthday with her family.

According to an Associated Press report in The Baltimore Sun, a 98-year-old woman has been indicted for strangling and smothering her 100-year-old roommate by tying a plastic bag around her head because she felt she was “trying to take over the room.” The two women’s beds were separated by just four feet. The Sun reports that the victim’s son had asked the facility to separate the two women due to tensions between them, but he was reassured that they were getting along — and that his mother did not want to leave the room, where she had lived with her husband until his death in 2007.

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A fatal pedestrian accident took place this past weekend in Baltimore County, Maryland, involving a tanker truck.

Maryland State Police reported that on Saturday morning, a pedestrian stepped into the path of an Exxon tanker truck at Harford Road and Interstate 695. The man, a 57 year old resident of Parkville, Md., died of his injuries at the scene. The Baltimore Sun reported that alcohol was not a factor in this fatal Maryland truck accident. No further details were available.

Baltimore County truck accident attorneys are familiar with regulations in place governing the safe operation of commercial vehicles, such as tanker trailer trucks. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), which is part of the U.S. Dept. of Transportation, works to reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities involving large trucks and buses.

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Anne Arundel County, Maryland, police reported that a fatal car pedestrian crash occurred Mon. Nov. 30 in Severna Park, Md.

The deadly car and pedestrian accident took place around noon on Ritchie Highway near Cypress Creek Rd. According to news reports, a Chestertown woman, age 64, and a man, age 43, from Arnold, Maryland, were standing next to a minivan that had stopped because of a motor vehicle accident. A Jeep Cherokee driven by an 18-year-old man crashed into a vehicle stopped at a traffic light, setting off a four-vehicle chain reaction that pushed into the two bystanders. The woman pedestrian died of her injuries and three other people suffered personal injuries.

Maryland pedestrian accident lawyers are well versed in state driving laws and issues surrounding driver liability, when a serious car or truck accident occurs and someone is hurt or killed on our state’s roads and highways.

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This Thanksgiving, as is the case every holiday season, law enforcement will be on the lookout to pull over speeders, reckless drivers, and drug- and alcohol-impaired drivers to prevent Maryland car accidents.

Though 2008 saw a decline in Thanksgiving travel, gas prices have stabilized to a level more drivers can live with, and the AAA predicts an uptick in holiday travel this year. That means more cars on Maryland’s roads and highways as people travel to and from our fair state to visit family. Other factors contributing to danger on Maryland roadways this holiday season:

> County and wildlife experts report that deer-vehicle collisions in Maryland occur in the thousands every year. Exact numbers are hard to gauge, as it’s unknown how many deer-car crashes occur that don’t get reported. Deer in the roadway are a concern for holiday drivers, particularly as dusk comes earlier with the days getting shorter, and animals are active at dawn and dusk.

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After many years of doctors advising women to start getting routine yearly breast cancer screening mammograms at age 40 — a new study comes out recommending women wait until age 50 for a first mammogram, then get one every two years after that. The study was released in Nov. ’09 by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (see link below).

News of the study quickly reverberated through the national and Maryland medical communities, with many doctors decrying the results and patients wondering what to do. Some hospitals reported that on the day the study results were released, patients cancelled their mammograms in record numbers.

As Baltimore injury and wrongful death attorneys who have assisted families with Maryland medical malpractice lawsuits, we are left to wonder how these new guidelines might affect medical care and cancer prevention.

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The Baltimore Sun reports that city police are reviewing a 911 call placed shortly before a Johns Hopkins University student was killed in a fatal hit-run pedestrian accident in Baltimore City, Maryland.

On Friday Oct. 16, 2009, in the mid-afternoon, neuroscience student Miriam Frankl, age 20, was attempting to cross St. Paul Street at University Parkway when she was struck by a pickup truck. The driver in this fatal Baltimore City pedestrian – pickup truck accident fled the scene. Ms. Frankl suffered serious head wounds and died of her injuries at Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

Police later apprehended and charged Thomas Meighan Jr. of Carroll County, Maryland, in relation to the death of Ms. Frankl. News reports state that Mr. Meighan has a lengthy history of drunk driving traffic violations in Maryland, including another DUI hit-and-run arrest in Northwest Baltimore this past summer.

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What would you guess are among the most dangerous jobs in Maryland? Construction? Roofing? Electrical work? You’d be right on all those counts, but some of the top causes of fatal occupational injuries in Maryland may come as somewhat of a surprise. According to the U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), of the 59 people who lost their lives due to work-related accidents in Maryland in 2008…

> Transportation accidents (which include air, rail, highway transportation including freight trucking accidents, nonhighway transportation, and being struck and killed by a vehicle, e.g., construction site worker pedestrian accidents) accounted for 17 deaths;

> 9 fatalities resulted from Assaults and Violent Acts (including self-inflicted injury);

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During the course of our work as Maryland and Baltimore County injury lawyers over the last two decades and counting, we’ve met so many nice families and individuals who needed our legal help to get through some very difficult situations. Often it’s because they went out one day and through no fault of their own, they got injured — or killed — in a traffic accident.

Other times, the cause of their injuries, or even their death, is due to medical malpractice. And in those types of personal injury cases, the cause is often not as clear cut as in auto accident or Maryland work accident cases. It is not always a single event that caused their injuries, disabilities, or wrongful death.

Medical malpractice or negligence often occurs as the result of the poor judgments and/or ill actions of more than one professional, over time, possibly at more than one institution. It can be a complex sequence of events leading up to a patient not being cured or helped, but instead, being permanently harmed. It can involve prescription error, surgical error, misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose, and failure to provide standard levels of care.

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