Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Personal Injury Blog

Fourth of July celebrations lead to many cases of drunk driving in Pennsylvania. Independence Day is, in fact, the worst holiday for drunk driving fatalities according to data from NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System. The DUI fatality rate comes to 42.4 people per day while the second deadliest holiday, Memorial Day, has a rate of 39.5. The winter holidays have lower rates with Thanksgiving at 27.9 and Christmas at 27.7.

Between 2010 and 2017, there were 1,192 DUI-related deaths on the Fourth of July. Memorial Day saw 1,102 deaths during that same period. The Fourth of July was also more dangerous on the weekdays with a DUI fatality rate of 43.4. If the holiday fell on the weekend, that rate went down to 36.3. Wednesday was the single riskiest day with a fatality rate of 52.

During the delivery process, infants may suffer an injury to their clavicle, or collarbone. Clavicle fractures are among the most common birth injuries, so parents in Pennsylvania will want to know how it occurs and how it can be treated.

There are various factors that can increase the risk for clavicle fractures, such as a large baby and a narrow birth canal. The baby may naturally get a shoulder stuck during delivery, or the use of forceps and other birth-assisting tools may inadvertently cause the fracture. The resulting pain in the clavicle will lead the infant to cry or become fussy whenever the affected arm is moved. There will also be limited movement in that arm. The affected shoulder may droop slightly. While the bone will usually heal without the need for treatment, it may develop a lump that can be felt when touching the shoulder.

In Pennsylvania, as anywhere else, it is usually harder to prepare a truck accident case than a car accident case, and there are five good reasons for this. First, any case becomes complex the more severe the injuries are. Trucks, being heavier and having a longer stopping distance, crash more forcefully into other vehicles, causing catastrophic injuries and even death.

Second, victims tend to meet with stronger opposition. Trucking companies and their insurance providers can work hard together to deny payment or force a low-ball settlement on victims. Third, there is often a question of whether the trucking company is to blame in the first place; many truckers are, after all, owner-operators. If a truck's cargo is linked to the accident, the company that loaded it may be liable, too.

Pennsylvania residents who pursue civil remedies after being injured in a car accident normally base their lawsuits on negligence. Negligence is a tort motorists commit when they fail to take reasonable care and another person is harmed as a direct consequence of their actions. This means that car accident victims hoping to prevail in court must prove that the defendant owed them a duty of care that went unmet. They must then convince a jury that their injuries would not have been suffered had this not happened.

All drivers are required to do everything that they reasonably can to avoid crashing, so the defendants in car accident lawsuits rarely argue that they did not have a duty of care. Matters tend to become more contentious when the issue of whether or not this duty was met is addressed. Motorists who are involved in traffic accidents may not be held responsible if a well-maintained car had some sort of catastrophic malfunction or they steered sharply to avoid striking a child who ran into the roadway unexpectedly.