A Licking County courtroom in Newark was the venue in which a final outcome was reached last Friday in the legal resolution of a tragic car accident that occurred slightly more than three years ago near the city of Pataskala. Shortly after midnight on June 15, 2008, an 18-year-old woman was driving back to…
Thirty states and Washington, D.C., have a texting-while-driving ban that it is believed serves as a strong deterrent to irresponsible behavior and greatly reduces tragic outcomes from car accidents and roadway fatalities. Ohio is not among them, but that is not for lack of trying. An anti-texting bill passed through the Ohio House last…
Ohio State Highway Patrol spokespersons frequently weigh in with public announcements concerning the importance of motorists and their passengers wearing seat belts at all times when they are in a vehicle, and they buttress their admonitions with statistics that stress the inordinate number of fatal car accidents involving persons that were not belted. Two…
Saying that, “We were seeing a disproportionate number of African American and Hispanic children coming into the hospital with severe crash-related injuries,” Dr. Rebeccah Brown of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center was part of a team that created a safety program called Buckle Up for Life in 2004 that centers on reducing injuries to…
David Zuby, chief research officer for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (“IIHS”), notes that “the laws of physics always are in effect for cars.” Given that scientific immutability, and all else being equal, a driver and his or her passengers will always fare better in a car accident if they are riding in…
Everyone knows that the human costs associated with the many thousands of car accidents and other motor vehicle crashes occurring across the country each year are truly tragic. Economically, too, the numbers are staggering, as revealed by statistics released recently by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”). In 2005, the most recent…
Findings from the Yale School of Medicine that will be presented at the upcoming Pediatric Academic Societies meeting in Denver might reasonably be expected to focus on the rather erudite and clinically centered information that customarily features at such peer gatherings. Instead, they will focus on infants and young children wriggling about in the…
Teens, proms, drinking and car accidents. The latter two do not, of course, automatically attach to what is the most magical night of the year for many high school students, but they certainly rank high on the list of parental concerns regarding that rite of teen passage Motor vehicle insurers also have more than…
Ohio public officials and regulators are perhaps experiencing a bit of déjà vu as they contemplate Blast, a new alcoholic beverage manufactured by Pabst Brewing Company. Late last year, Ohio banned the sale of Four Loko — a caffeinated malt liquor beverage — within the state, and it may now just do the same…
You know all those bans and taboos associated with teen drivers, i.e., those proscriptions that most adult drivers know intuitively are well-placed when it comes to curbing car accidents involving new and inexperienced drivers? The list is bandied about with great frequency, recited by everyone from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to researchers linked to…