Kansas City, Missouri Personal Injury Blog

One sign of spring is the number of motorcycles increases on local roads. Many people wait in anticipation for the first warm days to get their bike on the road after the chilly winter months. With more motorcycles on the road, the danger of Kansas City motorcycle accidents increase especially as other motorists may not yet expect to see bikes.

A recent area accident has highlighted the dangers associated with riding. A 45-year-old man and 13-year-old girl were killed when he lost control of his motorcycle on Interstate 35 in Kansas City. The young teen's mother reported that she had no knowledge of the ride. The mother explained that she would not have let her daughter get on the bike had she known.

Safety Tips as Season Kicks Off

Four million motorcycles are currently registered around the country. Motorcycles are smaller than other vehicles and their riders must drive defensively. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recommends several things that drivers can do to increase safety.

Twenty percent of drivers will be at least 65 years old by 2025. Currently, Missouri has more than 700,000 drivers who are age 65 or older.

Auto accidents involving drivers in this demographic occur with more frequency than average, a new study has found. Although older drivers represent 8 percent of the miles driven, they are involved in 17 percent of fatal accidents. In Missouri, more than 150 such accidents occurred in 2010.

The study, by two transportation groups, showed that older drivers are particularly vulnerable at intersections. Twenty percent of fatal accidents involving younger drivers occurred at intersections, but 37 percent of fatal accidents involving older drivers happened at intersections. This is probably because it becomes more difficult to judge speed and distance with age.

In the early morning hours of February 2012, two semitrailers travelling in opposite directions collided on Interstate 35 in Missouri. According to the Missouri Highway Patrol, one of the big rigs veered off the left side of the road, into the median and into the southbound lanes, where it struck the other semi truck.

Both trucks burst into flames. One driver died at the scene, and the other suffered moderate injuries. A passenger also suffered serious injuries and was flown to a Kansas City hospital.

It is especially tragic when professional truckers die behind the wheel, because most truck drivers are extremely safety conscious. Some Missouri truck accidents result from driver negligence, of course, but most can be blamed on drivers other than truckers.

It is not rare for Kansas City residents to suffer serious injuries after slipping and falling on someone else's property.

However, it can sometimes be challenging to recover for those injures in a Missouri premises liability lawsuit. It is not enough to show that a person fell and was injured. Rather, the plaintiff in a slip and fall lawsuit must prove that his or her injuries were a direct result of someone else's negligence.

This means that the plaintiff must provide evidence to show that a dangerous condition existed on the property. Further, the plaintiff must also prove that the defendant either knew or should have known of the dangerous condition, but did not take appropriate steps to fix it.

In December, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) issued an updated rule regulating the weekly allowable hours-of-service for truck drivers. Commercial truck drivers in Missouri will need to be in full compliance by July 1, 2013.

The new hours-of-service (HOS) rule impacts all individual commercial motor vehicle operators. There are distinct changes from the current rule. The changes were made in an effort to make the roadways safer and reduce truck accidents and fatalities.

Responding to an alarming increase in drivers' distracting use of cellphones, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recently concluded that states should act to ban almost all use of cellphones while driving.

The NTSB cited a dramatic 2010 fatal accident near Gray Summit, Missouri, in which a nineteen-year-old pickup driver, distracted by texting, started a pileup involving his vehicle, a tractor trailer and two school buses. In the truck accident, the pickup driver and a student died while dozens of others were injured. Investigators found that the pickup driver had received six text messages and sent five during the eleven minutes just before he slammed at full highway speed into the back of the semi-truck, which slowed for a construction zone.

For some time Missouri has had a law in place forbidding drivers under twenty-one from texting. The young pickup driver who caused the Gray Summit accident was in violation of Missouri law. On January 1, 2012, neighboring Kansas started issuing $60 fines for texting while driving regardless of age.

After weeks of public outcry, federal officials reopened public access to the National Practitioner Data Bank, a repository for the malpractice and disciplinary records of the nation's health care providers.

The database was shut down after the Kansas City Star used it to publicly identify a physician with a long record of Kansas City medical malpractice claims. Although the database attempts to keep individual practitioners anonymous, the newspaper was able to figure out the doctor's identity by comparing the database with other records, including court filings. Several other newspapers throughout the country have used the database in a similar fashion.

In today's modern health care system, primary care referrals, insurance restrictions, and crowded waiting rooms are common. While doctor-patient relationships and communication have been the subject of study, doctor-doctor communications have been less so. This past March, the National Institute for Health Care Reform (NIHCR) found that doctor-doctor communications are also key to reducing serious doctor errors and improving outcomes.

The NIHCR, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that conducts health policy research and analysis, conducted 42 telephone interviews in 2010 with 21 pairs of emergency department and primary care physicians. The organizations study revealed interesting results.

Distinctions between primary care and emergency care practices may be influencing some insured patients' preference for emergency department treatment. The ability for primary care doctors to educate their clients about conditions that warrant emergency treatment and concerns about primary care physician availability may have influenced this trend. Also, the fact that emergency rooms are more likely to admit patients than primary care doctors may be another factor. Better communication could lead to more effective use of both primary care and emergency department services.

Today, Missouri employers are using social media searches to make hiring decisions. However, both the Federal and Missouri employment discrimination acts prohibit certain questions, including questions regarding pregnancy and family planning.

Surveys estimate that today more than 45 percent of employers are using social networking to screen candidates they interview. And, approximately 35 percent of employers find that it is appropriate to reject applicants based on what they find about the candidate on social media sites. However, certain information that is found cannot be used to reject any potential job applicant.

The consequences of texting while driving have received a lot of recent news coverage. Texting is just the latest in a long list of distracted driving activities that can lead to car crashes involving property damage and personal injury.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), about 20 percent of auto crashes involving injuries are a result of distracted driving. Use of a cell phone - both for texting and talking - is by far the most common form of distracted driving.

But other types of distracted driving have been around for as long as cars have been on the road. The U.S. government lists these additional categories:

• Grooming and personal hygiene
• Fiddling with the radio, CD player or MP3 device
• Eating and drinking
• Talking with passengers
• Reading (including looking at a map or directions)
• Using a navigation system
• Watching a video