Monticello Kentucky Personal Injury Blog

Everyone is traveling during the holiday season, whether it is driving a few states over to spend time with family or taking a much-needed vacation.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, around 300 people die in drunk driving accidents during the time between Christmas and New Year each year. But in December alone, over 700 individuals lost their lives. This does not account for hazards on the road that are not intoxicated drivers. What are the holiday’s most dangerous road hazards, and how can you avoid an accident because of them?

As the American population ages, so do the number of senior and elderly drivers on the road. As people get older, they may feel as young as ever in some ways. However, their mental and physical capabilities diminish. Their senses aren't as good as they once were. Reaction time increases. Diminished mobility may make it harder to switch from the accelerator to the brake as quickly as necessary.

Even though older drivers tend to have safer driving habits, such as wearing seat belts and not exceeding posted speed limits, they still have a high injury and death rate. Besides suffering injuries themselves, they can put other drivers and passengers at risk.

Some of the most serious medical errors suffered by patients involve prescription medications. These errors include being given the wrong medication, either in a facility or when filling a prescription. Sometimes, patients are given the wrong dosage, perhaps by a nurse or other hospital or nursing home staffer who misreads the instructions. In other cases, patients are given a medication to which they're allergic or that interacts negatively with something else they're taking.

Medical professionals have a duty to take reasonable precautions to prevent these errors. However, patients and their family members can take steps to avoid potentially lethal mistakes.

Many Americans depend on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to be the "cop on the beat," as one safety advocate put it. They count on it to help ensure that car manufacturers take action to fix vehicle defects and to notify consumers about them.

However, the federal agency seems to have gotten less aggressive recently in pursuing investigations of reported problems. Last year, NHTSA opened just 13 investigations. That's a steep drop from 204 back in 1989. Further, it hasn't levied a civil penalty against a vehicle manufacturer since 2015. The significant drop in investigations actually started in 2016, when just 21 were initiated. In the decade prior to that, NHTSA averaged 61 new investigations each year.