New York Trial Lawyers Blog

Thanksgiving is almost here and a lot of university students will be returning home to visit New York family over the long weekend. Many students find the holiday an ideal time to catch up with old friends. For students over the age of 21, a local bar is the standard meeting place for Wednesday and Friday night gatherings.

A cautionary tale comes from Long Island, where this month a 22-year-old man crashed his car into a Suffolk County police cruiser in the early morning hours. The driver was wearing a shirt, which said "I'm not an alcoholic, I'm a drunk, alcoholics go to meetings." The officer in the police cruiser was a part of the department's Selective Alcohol Fatality Enforcement Team and arrested the man for driving while impaired (DWI).

While the incident may seem funny, driving after drinking one too many is no laughing matter. Drivers charged with Westchester or Rockland County DWI face serious consequences. Some of the penalties following conviction include: fines, court costs, possible jail time, loss of a driver's license and higher insurance premiums. A New York DWI conviction can become a very expensive crime.

Parents of teenagers who are learning to drive need to do a better job of modeling proper focus on the road. A recent survey showed that parents are too often distracted by the very devices that can put their teens at risk of texting while driving accidents.

The survey was conducted by State Farm Insurance. Remarkably, over half of parents - 53 percent - admitted to being distracted by cell phones or other electronic devices on at least one occasion while teaching their teenage children to drive.

The teenagers who were surveyed put the figure even higher. The number of teens who said their parents were distracted by cell phones or texting while teaching their teens to drive was 61 percent.

These numbers are way too high. "It's alarming," said Chris Mullen, the director of technology research for State Farm. "There's a need to remind parents that they are role models."

Given the risk of distracted driving accidents, a parent who is a proper role model should put down the phone and other electronic devices when teaching a teenager to drive. It's that simple.

Ray LaHood, the U.S. transportation secretary, is trying to get parents to realize how powerful their teaching role can be in creating good driving habits for a lifetime. When parents put the phone away while driving, LaHood says, "it's not just common sense safe behavior. It's a life-long lesson for the children in the backseat."

Even without the risk of distracted driving, it's not easy learning to drive. Parents need to do a better job of getting kids started by paying more attention themselves.

Source: "Parents distracted while teaching kids to drive," USA Today, 10-17-11

Getting behind the wheel of a motor vehicle is a big responsibility. This is especially true in New York, with its high traffic density.

It is therefore vitally important for the driver to operate the vehicle safely, regardless of who he or she is. In this sense, it doesn't matter whether the driver is a man or a woman - or, for that matter, transgender. The main thing is to drive safely and not get into car accidents.

But is it true that women, in general, tend to drive somewhat more safely than men? A recent survey conducted by the MetLife insurance company had some interesting findings on that question.

Most respondents in the survey viewed women as being somewhat safer drivers than men. The survey found that less than 4 in every 10 of the men survey (39 percent) considered men to be safer drivers than women. For women, more than half (51 percent) of the respondents said women are safer drivers than men.

Passing a statewide ban on texting while driving or cell-phone use behind the wheel is one thing. Thirty-four states have banked texting while driving for all drivers. Ten states and the District of Columbia have gone a step further and banned the use hand-held cell phones while driving for all drivers. The goal is clear: to reduce car accidents caused by distracted driving.

But how effective is enforcement of such bans? A recent year-long study in Syracuse, New York, and Harford, Connecticut, casts important light on that question.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration worked with police in Syracuse and Hartford to aggressively enforce cell-phone bans and track the results. The data has much to say about how aggressive enforcement can bring down the amount of distracted driving

In both Syracuse and Hartford, police wrote more than 9,000 tickets for talking on cellphones while driving or texting while driving. Researchers found that the enforcement campaign reduced texting while driving by 72 percent in Hartford. The reduction in Syracuse was 32 percent.

Legislation isn't the answer to every problem. When it comes to driving a car safely, for example, personal responsibility is paramount.

But the structures that society creates for training and licensing young drivers are also important. Drivers between the ages of 15 and 20 are involved in three times as many fatal car accidents per mile driven as all other drivers.

With temptations such as texting that often distract them, these inexperienced kids need help learning to drive with competence and care. But many states have been slow to adopt the type of graduated drivers' licensing (GDL) requirements that have been shown to reduce teenage driving accidents.

Such requirements would be made more uniform around the country by a proposed bill in Congress known as the STANDUP Act. That is short for Safe Teen and Novice Driver Uniform Protection Act.

According to a report by pedestrian advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, a pedestrian is killed in New York City every 35 hours. Vision Zero, a proposal established for future pedestrian safety, reports that on average, 317 New York pedestrians are killed in car accidents each year. In fact, more pedestrians are killed in traffic accidents than are murdered in New York City. In 2009, traffic incidents lead to $4 billion in losses, considering lost income and wrongful death compensation.

According to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles (NYSDMV), more than 15,000 pedestrians were injured across the state in 2009. Most accidents occurred during the afternoon hours. Driver inattentiveness and failure to yield were cited as the most common causes for pedestrian accidents. These factors suggest that inattentiveness during rush hour contributed to such accidents.

It was almost 30 years ago that my high school classmate, Mark Dolinksy, was riding home on his bicycle on a residential street in White Plains. A car struck him as he turned into his driveway. The driver was speeding and driving with a suspended license.  Mark suffered a terrible injury as a result of the collision.  He was taken off life support three days later when his parents were confronted with the awful truth that Mark would not survive.

Mark was not wearing a bicycle helmet that day.  There was no law in 1981 requiring helmets for bicycle riders.  I didn't wear a bicycle helmet and none of my friends or anyone we knew wore helmets back then. Mark Dolinsky's untimely death changed that.

Today, people know full well that riding a bicycle is dangerous, not because of what you may do, but because of drunk or unlicensed drivers or distracted drivers.  Who can know when they will be faced with a speeding car driven by a man with a suspended license like the one who was responsible for Mark's death?

The same danger applies not only to bicyclists, but to those who ride motorcycles. It is a fact of life that people can be seriously injured in motorcycle accidents.  On many ocassions our White Plains car accident attorneys and motorcycle accident lawyers of the firm had to sit and counsel someone who suffered a horrible injury on the road.  According to the article referenced below,

Annual motorcycle deaths have more than doubled since the late 1990s with 5,290 in 2008, based on a report issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

New York has a law requiring motorcyclists to wear a helmet. This law is designed to save lives - not inflict on freedoms.  It should be terribly obvious to anyone why this law makes sense and should be enforced.  Unfortunately, there are some among us who do not see reason and instead wish to tempt fate.

An upstate New York man was participating in a rally against laws such as New York's Vehicle & Traffic Law Section 381 which require helmets to be worn by motorcyclists. You can learn about his fate - Motorcycle rider without helmet dies

It is hard to fathom what people like this are thinking when they take part in part in such a protest. 

• Do they care about the families that they leave behind who have to cope with their loss?
• Do they care about the loved ones who have to take care of them if they survive, but are catastrophically injured?

The organizers of this protest should take a long hard look at what they are doing.   They would do well to learn from the example of the Dolinsky family who turned the tragedy of their son's death into an inspiration for so many.

Please take a moment to learn more about the Dolinsky Foundation and the tremendous benefit it has bestowed upon the young people of Westchester County.

Another example of the dangers created by texting while driving.  DWI-Texting  This time, the driver is also accused of driving while intoxicated. Fortunately, no one was hurt in the incident.  Texting someone while driving is bad enough, doing so after having consumed alcohol is worse.  This driver faces misdemeanor DWI charges and a traffic offense for texting while driving.