Illinois and Missouri Motor Vehicle Accidents Law Blog

A few caveats about new-vehicle safety systems

On behalf of Johnston Law of Johnston Law Offices P.C. posted in Car Accidents on Tuesday, November 13, 2018.

Decades of research and innovation in automotive safety have resulted in passive safety features such as seatbelts and airbags in every vehicle. Together, those two features have saved untold thousands of lives over the years.

But advancing technology has brought rapid change to vehicle safety features in the past few years; features that help prevent automobile crashes and injuries from happening in the first place. Unfortunately, these effective safety aids come with a couple of important caveats: not all drivers understand how the high-tech features function and don’t know how to take advantage of them.

Series of distracted driving crashes claims schoolkids’ lives

On behalf of Johnston Law of Johnston Law Offices P.C. posted in Car Accidents on Sunday, November 4, 2018.

Will news in Edwardsville media of the latest motor vehicle crashes be enough to make drivers pay attention to the road and traffic instead of their phones? Let’s hope so. The crashes claimed the lives of five school children in a series of wrecks across the nation.

The horrific distracted driving crashes began in Rochester, Indiana, where twin 6-year-old brothers and their 9-year-old sister were struck and killed by a pick-up as they crossed the street to get on their school bus. Another child was struck, injured and then airlifted to a hospital for treatment. The pick-up driver has been charged with reckless homicide.

Managing disputed workers' comp claims

On behalf of Johnston Law of Johnston Law Offices P.C. posted in Workers' Compensation on Tuesday, October 30, 2018.

Facing the prospect of filing a workers' compensation insurance claim to recover benefits is one of those things that can elicit a heavy sigh. No matter how solid you believe your claim to be, you may feel you will have to fight for every bit of compensation you get. In the end, questions may linger about whether you lost out on any benefits because you just didn't know the system.

Dispelling those anxieties is one of the major benefits of working with an experienced workers' compensation attorney. Insurance companies have teams of attorneys who take advantage of the nuances of the law. By enlisting an attorney's help on your behalf, you level the playing field.

How often are work zones a factor in car accidents?

On behalf of Johnston Law of Johnston Law Offices P.C. on Monday, October 29, 2018.

With so many expansion and maintenance projects underway on Illinois and other state roadways every day, avoiding road construction is virtually impossible. For many drivers, these work zones can be a highly dangerous place to navigate. In fact, work-zone crashes are on the rise across the state and nation, and there are a number of different factors that together make work zones a hazardous place to be.

Construction zones are so dangerous nowadays, in fact, that the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration reports that more than 96,600 crashes occurred in construction zones in 2015. Additionally, the number of work-zone-related crashes occurring on the nation’s roadways rose 42 percent between 2013 and 2015, with one work-zone crash now happening every 4.5 seconds.

Distracted driving is about more than just texting

On behalf of Johnston Law of Johnston Law Offices P.C. posted in Car Accidents on Monday, October 22, 2018.

When we hear the phrase “distracted driving,” we often think of texting. This is with good reason, as texting is a particularly invasive distraction that involves three distinct components. There is the manual aspect, which involves taking a hand off the wheel, the visual component in which the driver takes his or her eyes off the road, and the cognitive element wherein the driver is too busy focusing his or her mental energy on the text conversation to pay much attention to the road ahead.

Distracted driving is much more than just texting, though. Almost anything can be a distraction when done behind the wheel.

Social media and driving: A dangerous combo

On behalf of Johnston Law of Johnston Law Offices P.C. posted in Car Accidents on Wednesday, October 17, 2018.

The temptation to check one’s social media can arise quite often for people these days. The ease of access to social media accounts that smartphones provide contributes to this. So, too does how big of a part such sites have come to play in everyday social life.

However, there are certain times it is critical for individuals to resist this temptation. Among these times are when they are driving.

The door may be opening for adaptive driving beams in the U.S.

On behalf of Johnston Law of Johnston Law Offices P.C. posted in Car Accidents on Friday, October 12, 2018.

Nighttime poses special risks for traffic safety, including pedestrian safety. Among the things that have very big impacts on drivers’ ability to respond to these risks is visibility level.

Nighttime visibility levels for drivers, in turn, are heavily affected by the quality and condition of the headlights on vehicles. These things impact both the level of illumination the headlights provide and how likely they are to create problematic glare.

Exoskeletons: A major future protector of worker safety?

On behalf of Johnston Law of Johnston Law Offices P.C. posted in Workers' Compensation on Wednesday, October 3, 2018.

Technology could lead to many new tools coming into the workplace. One such emerging tool is the exoskeleton. Broadly speaking, industrial exoskeletons are devices that are designed to work in tandem with a worker’s body to help the worker with physical tasks. They can be powered or passive. Also, they can vary in size and in the types of physical tasks they are aimed at helping workers with.

Such technology is just starting to come into the workplace. Some experts think that upcoming years could see it grow considerably in its presence in industrial environments.

Have millennial drivers earned their bad reputation?

On behalf of Johnston Law of Johnston Law Offices P.C. on Sunday, September 30, 2018.

These days, millennials find themselves a frequent target of criticism, with many people across other age groups considering them entitled and lazy. While whether such criticisms are accurate is up for debate, there is at least one area in which millennial drivers have earned their poor reputation.

According to USA Today, millennial drivers are “highway hazards,” and while this is a common belief among older populations, there are also statistics to back it up. Just what are millennial drivers doing to endanger everyone else on the roadway?

How well do drivers understand the limitations of safety tech?

On behalf of Johnston Law of Johnston Law Offices P.C. posted in Car Accidents on Friday, September 28, 2018.

The many new auto safety technologies that have been coming onto the market have the potential to prevent crashes and make the roads a safer place. However, they also have their limitations. A recent study indicates that there are many drivers out there who don’t understand these limitations.

The study was by AAA. It found that it was pretty common for drivers to have misconceptions about what certain safety technologies can and can’t do. Technologies included in this are adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking, forward-collision warning and blind-spot monitoring.