Miami Injury Lawyer Blawg

Florida Leads the country in Pedestrian Danger Index. While Orlando led the way in the Pedestrian Danger Index, Miami led the way in the number of deaths between 2000-2009 at 1,555.

Transportation for America calculated its Pedestrian Danger Index which, among other things, considers the rate of pedestrian deaths relative to the amount of walking in cities around the nation.

Central Florida led the list this year, followed by Tampa-St. Petersburg, Jacksonville and Miami-Fort Lauderdale. The state placed four areas in the top 10, more than Texas, which had two, or California, which had one.

As reported by the Orlando Sentinel, The organization, which pushes for alternative forms of transportation, argues that many pedestrian deaths are predictable and the result of design standards that elevate the car above all else.

Roads are built wide to move traffic quickly and safely, the authors say, and there is little regard for people who walk or bike.

Pedestrian deaths are "typically labeled 'accidents' and attributed to error on the part of motorist or pedestrian," the report states. "However, the majority of these deaths share a common thread: They occurred along 'arterial' roadways that were dangerous by design, streets engineered for speeding traffic with little or no provision for people on foot, in wheelchairs or on bicycles."

A map produced by Transportation for America shows pedestrian deaths clustered along some of the region's most infamous roads, State Road 50, State Road 436, Orange Blossom Trail and U.S. Highway 192.

The survey's findings are not surprising given the state's prevailing pattern of development.

The fatality rate for seniors is 3.7 per 100,000 compared with 2.7 for residents under the age of 65. Hispanics, the authors say, had average pedestrian death rate 37 percent higher than non-Hispanic whites. The rate among African-Americans was 48 percent higher than non-Hispanic whites.

The disparity likely reflects, in part, differences in income. Affluent Floridians can afford homes in neighborhoods with relatively quiet streets and sidewalks. Poorer residents are more likely to live in apartment complexes that line major arterials in many areas or in neighborhoods with few sidewalks. Poorer residents also tend to walk more because they are less likely to own their own vehicle.

The report comes as Congress gears up to draft a new comprehensive transportation spending bill. Transportation for America and a coalition of similar groups are pushing lawmakers to make spending on bike and pedestrian safety a higher priority and urging them not to cut funding in those areas.

The groups point out that 67 percent of all pedestrian fatalities in the past 10 years occurred on roads eligible for federal money.

Continue reading "Florida is Most Dangerous State For Pedestrians" »

In what has become an all too common occurrence, police are seeking leads in
a hit-and-run crash in which a bicyclist was struck and killed on the Sheridan Street Bridge in Hollywood, FL.

The bridge's cameras were rolling on May 13, when Willmar Edwardo Galeano, 45, of Pembroke Pines, rode his bicycle westbound on the bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway. Galeano was struck from behind by a white van that also was westbound at 9:21 p.m.

The van left the scene.

Galeano was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital and died from his injuries two days later, police said.

The portion of video released by police shows the final seconds before the van struck Galeano.

Continue reading "Police Looking for for a Hit and Run Motorist Who Struck and Killed a Cyclist" »

A panel of Food and Drug Administration advisers voted 21-0 in favor of adding doses for children 6 months to 2 years old to over-the-counter acetaminophen formulas. The FDA has convened a two-day meeting to consider changes that will make the formulas safer and easier to use.

The liquid formulas have never contained dosing information for children under 2 to avoid an overdose and to encourage parents to seek medical attention for sick infants. Fever in children younger than six months can be associated with dangerous infections, like meningitis pneumonia, and Kawasaki disease.

The FDA's panelists said the lack of information contributes to confusion and can lead parents to incorrectly dose children. Acetaminophen-related overdoses are most common among children younger than 2, and have increased over the past decade, according to FDA data.

Acetaminophen is among the mostly widely used drugs in the U.S., sold in hundreds of formulations and combinations with other ingredients. Wednesday's meeting dealt with a small group of single-ingredient products, including J&J's Children and Infants' Tylenol, Novartis' Triaminic, Prestige Brands' Little Fevers and various drugstore brands
While safe when used as directed, acetaminophen has long been subject to warning labels because it can cause liver damage when overused. Dosing errors with children's acetaminophen products accounted for 2.8 percent, or 7,500, of the 270,165 emergencies reported to poison centers last year, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers.
Overdoses can be caused by parents not reading the label, misinterpreting the dosing instructions or using a spoon or other container instead of the cup included with the product.

The FDA will use this week's discussion to write binding guidelines for drugmakers.
In a separate vote Wednesday, the panel voted unanimously that medicines should include dosing information based on children's weight, which is considered the most accurate dosing measure. Nearly all over-the-counter manufacturers already include a dosing table with both weight and age. But panelists said instructions must emphasize that weight is the preferred approach.

Continue reading "FDA Panel Recommends Dosage Instructions for Infants Receiving Children's Tylenol " »

When Governor Scott said he was going after the Florida Trial Lawyers, we knew the beneficiary would be the Insurance industry. Governor Scott left no doubt with the anti-consumer legislation he pushed during the 2011 session, and when he signed into law on Tuesday a wide-ranging bill that could allow home insurers to raise premiums up to 15 percent a year for reinsurance, on top of regular rate hikes.

Opponents said the law benefits insurers at the expense of homeowners.

A provision to effectively allow insurers to raise premiums by up to 15 percent a year for reinsurance costs drew the most fire in recent weeks. In 2009, the legislature allowed quicker approval of rate hikes for costs related to reinsurance, or catastrophe insurance for insurers, so long as premiums didn't increase by more than 10 percent.

The new law this year raises the cap and allows insurers to ask for another rate hike - using the normal oversight process - during the same year. Insurers are also allowed to charge a profit margin on the reinsurance costs, though they're shifting the risk to reinsurance companies.

Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, who led efforts to fight the legislation, said it conflicts with Scott's goal of avoiding tax increases. "For an administration which vowed not to support new taxes or fees, this bill virtually guarantees [premium increases] for Florida policyholders," he wrote in a statement. "Insurance companies will only get richer because of this legislation while policyholders will have to pay more of their hard earned money for what will amount to less coverage."

As reported by the Sun Sentinel, Scott received hundreds of emails, letters and calls about the legislation.

The new law makes more than 20 changes. Among other things, it will:

Shorten the time policyholders have to file claims to two years for sinkhole claims and three years for hurricane claims, from the current five years;

Allow insurers to withhold full payment for home damage claims until the work is performed and expenses incurred, except for homes that are destroyed;

Require policyholders to pay up to half of the cost of testing for sinkholes if the insurer denies the claim and its engineer determines there is no sinkhole;

Allow insurers to require an inspection of a property before issuing coverage for sinkholes;

Allow insurers to drop sinkhole coverage for anything other than the main building on a property;

Prevent regulators from urging insurers to charge policyholders less for advertising and agent commissions;

Require Citizens Property Insurance to hire an outside consultant to examine whether the state-run insurer could save money and do a better job if it shifted some work done by full-time employees to contractors;

Require new home insurance companies to have $15 million in reserves starting this year and existing insurers to have $15 million by 2021, with some exceptions;

Bar public insurance adjusters, hired by policyholders in claims disputes with insurers, from advertising with logos that resemble those of a government agency or saying there is "no risk" to a policyholder by filing a claim;

Prohibit public adjusters from charging more than 10 percent of the portion of a claims payment they help recover for Citizens policyholders;

Require public adjusters to provide a copy of their contracts with policyholders to insurers;

Allow insurers that offer policies covering both a home and vehicle to drop coverage if they warn policyholders at least 90 days in advance, a perk intended to draw an unnamed insurer to the state; and

Clarify gray areas of state law to say the Legislature intends to reduce disputes and litigation from sinkhole claims, a standard that might be applied to pending claims disputes.

Continue reading "New Homeowners Insurance Law Signed Into Effect By Governor Scott" »

A bicycle accident claimed the life of Leopard-Trek's Wouter Weylandt after crashing on the descent of the Bocco mountain pass around 25km from the finish line during the Giro d'Italia Monday.

Race officials said his left pedal got stuck in a wall at the side of the road, forcing Weylandt to tumble around 20 meters to the ground below.

Weylandt, 26, was left bloodied and unconscious and required a cardiac massage after the crash.

He received emergency medical treatment by race doctors and was scheduled to be airlifted to hospital but had to wait as an emergency helicopter looked for a suitable landing spot.

Weylandt is the first professional rider to die in a crash since 2003 while racing since Kazakhstan's Andrei Kivilev succumbed to head injuries the morning after a crash on the second stage of Paris-Nice.

Kivilev's death, while the rider was travelling at a seemingly innocuous speed, signalled the introduction of the mandatory wearing of helmets in the professional peloton.

Weylandt, who hailed from Ghent, is the first fatality on the Giro since 1986 when Emilio Ravasio crashed on the first stage and fell into a coma to die several days later.

Although life and career-threatening crashes are a regular occurrence in cycling, the last fatality on the world's biggest race, the Tour de France, was over a decade ago.

On the race's 15th stage in 1995 Italy's Fabio Casartelli -- a member of Lance Armstrong's Motorola team -- died a few hours after sustaining injuries in a crash on the descent of the Portet d'Aspet in the Pyrenees.

U.S. safety regulators have expanded an investigation into the possibility that straps holding fuel tanks can rust and break on Ford Motor Co F-150 pickup trucks from the 1997-2001 model years. The recall effects 2.7 million vehicles.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said over the weekend that two fires have resulted from the issue in which one or both of the steel straps that hold the F-150 fuel tank in place rust and break.

An investigation is short of a recall but many investigations lead to an automaker recalling vehicles for safety issues.

The F-150 is the primary model in the Ford F-series pickup truck lineup which are the best-selling vehicles in North America.

Ford reported a complaint in which a vehicle was destroyed by fire due to a leaking fuel tank, and safety regulators said they had received one complaint of a fire that went out before it caused major damage.

There were 306 consumer complaints, 175 filed with the NHTSA and 156 with Ford. Some consumers filed with both the automaker and the safety regulator, the NHTSA said.

"Among the incidents reported to NHTSA or Ford, 243 involved the fuel tank dropping below the vehicle and/or dragging on the ground, 95 involved fuel leakage, and nine included reports of sparks from the tank being dragged on the road," the NHTSA filing said.

The probe was opened last September when an estimated 1.4 million F-150 pickup trucks were suspected of possibly having the problem. The investigation was opened after 32 consumer complaints had been received by last September.

As a Miami Personal Injury Attorney I am all too familiar with the dangers of Distracted Driving. The US Department of Transportation is aggressively working to educate drivers about the inherent dangers of distracted driving.

Allstate Insurance company has joined the fight to educate parents and teens.

Allstate's "Thumbs Up" Facebook page has tens of thousands of fans who have all pledged to "X the TXT."

This pledge may help curb the deadly epidemic of distracted driving because it's a promise to take responsibility for one's behavior behind the wheel.

Accepting the responsibility that comes with a set of car keys means knowing the serious risk to others of reading even one short text message, and this leads to better common sense behind the wheel.

Continue reading "Allstate Insurance Company Educating Parents and Teens about Distracted Driving" »

Governor Rick Scott and the Republican controlled legislature concluded the legislative session by passing a number of anti-consumer bills, and of course lining the pockets of the insurance industry.

In a sweeping overhaul of the $21 billion Medicaid program, the Florida Legislature approved a bill Friday to shift nearly three million Medicaid recipients into managed-care programs in the hope of saving money and improving services.

If signed into law as expected, the bill will make Florida, with one of the largest number of Medicaid patients and a high rate of uninsured, one of the biggest states to jump almost entirely from a traditional Medicaid payment system into managed care. The wholesale shift would begin in July 2012.

Patients would be charged $10 monthly premiums and $100 if they showed up at the emergency room with a non-emergency.

The state and managed-care companies would control which services to provide to Medicaid patients.

The key handout to the insurance industry is a provision that limits the amount they would have to pay out in malpractice damages for pain and suffering to $300,000 for each Medicaid claimant, unless the damages award is punitive. Democrats said it would be unreasonable to charge poor patients fees and unjust to treat them differently in malpractice cases. "Why is it that their pain and suffering is devalued?" asked State Senator Arthenia L. Joyner, a Democrat of Tampa.

n 2003 the legislature also passed caps on pain and suffering that limits awards to $1,500,000, in the most catastrophic cases against hospitals and $500,000.00 in cases against doctors-up to a combined limit of $1,000.000.00 for all doctors. Thus, the most a non medicaid patient can recover for pain and suffering is $2,500,000. If the new law is approved by the federal government, the most a medicaid patient will be entitled to recover for pain and suffering is $300,000.00

Gov. Rick Scott, a wealthy former health care executive made revamping Medicaid a priority.

The proposed law cannot go into effect without the approval of the federal government, which pays more than half of Florida's Medicaid tab. Last month, the federal government advised legislators to choose the payment system that would guarantee that a percentage of the money, in this case 90 percent, would go to patient services. Instead, the Legislature chose the other option: to share profits with managed-care companies.

Democrats and patient advocates said that they worried profit would get in the way of care and that some people would not be able to pay premiums. They expressed alarm that the bill is based on a five-year-old pilot program in five Florida counties that had decidedly mixed results. At least seven managed-care companies pulled out of the program in Broward County, and many patients -- most of whom are low-income children or pregnant women -- fled to networks run by hospitals.

Managed care is not new to Florida. About 60 percent of Medicaid patients are in some form of managed care but, outside of the pilot program, they must receive a mandated minimum level of benefits.

The Medicaid overhaul also extends into long-term care. Nursing home residents would shift into managed care, but the bill provides a separate provision for them. Payments would go directly to the nursing homes, bypassing managed-care companies, so money would not be deducted for administrative fees. Savings would come by shifting more people into home- and community-based programs.

Developmentally disabled people would be exempt from the managed care system for now. And each of the 11 managed-care regions in Florida would have to include a network run by a hospital or doctors. Those networks could continue to use the traditional payment system for three more years.

Those who already have insurance and are eligible for Medicaid would receive a voucher from the state to apply to their policies.

Continue reading "Florida Legislators Limit Medicaid Patient's Pain and Suffering" »

In hopes of reducing bicycle accidents in Miami, the Royal Netherlands embassy in Washington has dispatched three of the famously bike-friendly country's top experts on "cycling as transportation'' to Miami, where they will spend three days figuring out how to turn the city's car-clogged downtown into a virtual Amsterdam of safe, connected bikeways.

The ThinkBike Workshop comes to town as Florida's transportation department and some local governments have embarked on a push to refit the mean streets and roads of Miami-Dade County to accommodate, even embrace, bicycles.

The plan is to construct miles of new bike lanes and bike-friendly wide shoulders along principal byways from Krome Avenue in West Miami-Dade to Collins Avenue and Alton Road on Miami Beach, Red Road along the western border of Coral Gables and Northeast 125th Street in North Miami, among others.

As reported by The Miami Herald, the ultimate goal is to create an eventual network of on-street bikeways that encourage people to use bicycles for their daily business - to get to school or work, to run errands, to go out to eat or visit the neighborhood park - as casually as the Dutch do.

The approach follows the Dutch experience, where extreme bike-friendliness didn't just happen. Experts say it took 40 years of concerted bicycle planning, street re-engineering, promotion and education, but the Dutch have shown that hordes of people will happily hop on their bikes if it's safe and convenient to do so.

The very thought that an auto-crazy city like Miami can - and even must - become bicycle-friendly may strike some as nuts. Advocates concede it will take more than a few road tweaks and some serious attitude adjustment, especially among Miami's notoriously careless and aggressive motorists, before more people become willing to brave cycling on its streets.

But they say anecdotal evidence, some studies and recent experience suggest enough people are eager to try it, especially younger residents in revitalized urban neighborhoods, to more than justify the effort, which is relatively inexpensive. Although state law permits bicycles on nearly all roadways, experts say dedicated bike lanes improve safety, encourage more people to ride and, as an added bonus, act to calm motorized traffic. That betters safety for everyone, including pedestrians. Local planners say more people are already looking for alternative transportation as gas prices spike, and cite the startling success of Miami Beach's new DecoBike program, which provides station-to-station rentals. It's generated thousands of rentals in its first few weeks of operation, with only half the system installed.

Miami, which two years ago approved an ambitious bicycling master plan calling for miles of new bikeways, is about to issue a request for proposals for its own bike-sharing program, which would operate downtown and in Brickell, said Alice Bravo, the city's director of capital improvement projects.

A key piece in the burgeoning transformation, advocates say, is a fresh approach by FDOT's district office, once regarded as hostile to cyclists. The agency hired a consultant, Stewart Robertson of engineering firm Kimley-Horn and Associates, to incorporate bike planning in the early stages of every local FDOT road project.

However, not all has been smooth sailing, as even some specifically designated as bike routes - remain perilous for cyclists. The TransitMiami.com website documented half a dozen bike-car accidents in one week in April alone.

In one, two people riding in a relatively new bike lane along the MacArthur Causeway were struck from behind by a car, leaving one man critically injured. TransitMiami writers say simply slapping down some stripes too often results in poorly conceived bike lanes like the MacArthur's, which they argue should include curbs or barriers - such as the Dutch often use - to separate riders from fast auto traffic.

Another problem is that local police often do not enforce laws protecting cyclists, such as a 2-year-old state law that prohibits cars from passing bikes at less than three feet of distance, or to go after motorists who harass them.

Continue reading "Miami-Dade Hoping To Increase Bicycle Safety" »

MIAMI GARDENS-- A 14-year-old boy was killed Saturday evening near the intersection of Northwest 199 Street and 27th Avenue when he was struck by a red pickup truck, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

As reported by the Sun Sentinel, The driver of the truck fled the scene after the 10 p.m. collision. Investigators ask that anyone with information about the incident or the suspect vehicle call the FHP at 305-475-2500 or Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS.

Continue reading "Hit and Run Driver Kills 14 Year Old Bicyclist" »