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What do you imagine when someone tells you that they suffered an injury after a collision with another vehicle? You probably think of conditions involving blood, bruising and/or broken bones. While these are real concerns, they are not the only things that crash victims need to worry about. Vehicle accidents can also cause intense emotional damage. Here are just a few examples of how emotional damage manifests in the wake of a collision. 1. Victims may be too scared to drive again Recovering the physical ability to drive a vehicle is only part of the battle. Many people are left too scared to take the wheel again. Others can only do so if they stick to quieter roads or daylight hours or don’t take passengers. Each situation will be different, but they can all cause inconvenience. If you have recently suffered harm in an accident, you might even need to change your job if you no longer feel confident enough to drive there or if driving was your job. 2. Victims may suffer flashbacks Waking up screaming in the middle of the night can be scary for those you share a house with and stressful for you. Also, enduring flashbacks during activities where you need to focus, such as when you are driving or operating a machine, could endanger you and others. 3. Victims may struggle to live with guilt Despite everyone telling you that there was nothing you could have done to avoid crashing and that it was entirely the other driver’s fault, you may still feel guilty if someone was injured or killed. That guilt can take a massive toll on crash victims, causing some to engage in self-harm or to be unable to enjoy their life anymore. You should not assume that everything is fine after a vehicle crash. It may take time to tell. Getting legal help to understand what kind of compensation you may be able to claim could potentially help you to recover quicker and more fully.

The basic concept of a premises liability claim is that a property owner should have done more to ensure you were safe when visiting their premises. Yet these cases are anything but basic. North Carolina cases revolve around two things. 1. Whether an owner took reasonable care Things that could affect your case include the following: Whether the owner knew or should have known about the hazard in question What, if anything they did to warn and protect visitors from the hazard Where the hazard was located (in an easily accessible spot or behind a barrier, for example) Let’s use the example of a hole in the ground. You are more likely to succeed in a claim if: The owner knew of the hole rather than if they were entirely unaware and the hole was new. The hole was in plain view rather than hidden under brambles. The owner did nothing to safeguard people rather than if they took action. The hole is close to the road rather than a long way inside the property. 2. Whether you had the legal right to be there in the first place You’ll have a stronger case if you were lawfully on the property than if you jumped a fence with signs saying, “Private property. Stay out.” Courts sometimes make exceptions if they feel the hazard tempted a child to enter unlawfully. One example could be a climbing frame that could see through the boundary fence. You could face large medical bills if you or your child gets injured on someone’s property. Understanding your legal options could help to cover them.

Things can get costly when you’re injured in a workplace accident. Hopefully, you can recover those costs through a workers’ compensation claim. Yet many people see their claims denied or their compensation reduced because of mistakes they made after the accident. Here are some errors you need to avoid making: 1. Taking too long to tell your employer you’ve had an accident Some employers or line managers can be difficult to deal with. If you fear yours will give you an earful for having an accident, you might prefer to hide it from them. However, you must tell them as soon as possible and notify them in writing within 30 days. Otherwise, you could lose your right to claim. 2. Not getting a medical check-up Medical reports are crucial when claiming compensation. Having a doctor document your injuries as soon as possible makes it clear when they happened. If you do not see a doctor for two days, for example, the insurer may claim you got injured elsewhere and try to deny your benefits. Even more importantly, early medical attention increases the chance you make a full recovery. Some injuries can deteriorate fast if left. Doctors train to spot medical problems others cannot see. 3. Trying to do too much too soon If your doctor says you need a month of work and should avoid strenuous activity, then do what they tell you. While you might feel well enough to mow the lawn or return to work early, doing so could jeopardize your claim. Insurers are always on the lookout for opportunities to argue the doctor’s diagnosis was too generous. There is legal help available if you wish to understand more about maximizing your chances of a successful workers’ compensation claim.

A car accident can be a traumatizing experience. If you are hurt in a car crash as a result of another driver’s reckless acts, you will want to pursue compensation. In so doing, you must establish how the accident happened and how the other driver is liable for your injuries. Unfortunately, not all personal injury claims end in compensation. Sometimes, a personal injury claim may be denied even if it is justified. Here are two reasons for denial. You fail to seek treatment in time If you are involved in a car accident, you must seek treatment as soon as you can. This is important for two reasons. First, your health is important. Second, you will obtain a medical report that you will use to justify your claim. Even if you do not feel hurt, it is important that you seek medical attention. Remember, some injuries take days or even weeks to manifest. Claiming will be more challenging if you fail to seek medical attention immediately following the accident, as the defendant’s insurance company may argue that the injuries for which you are seeking compensation had nothing to do with the accident. You delay in filing your claim Every state has a time limit within which an injury victim must file a claim. This is known as the statute of limitations. In North Carolina, an injury victim has three years from the accident to file a personal injury claim. Except under specific circumstances, you risk losing your right to compensation if you do not file on time. A car accident can leave you with costly injuries. If you are hurt in a car accident, it is important that you avoid pitfalls that might result in your personal injury claim being denied.

Among other things, workers’ compensation provides important medical benefits for injured workers. Unfortunately, exercising your rights to the care you need isn’t always a straightforward process, however. It often surprises injured workers that their employer actually gets to dictate what doctor they see. In an emergency situation, you can seek immediate care wherever necessary, but you otherwise need to see your employer’s on-site doctor or their designated health care office. What if you don’t trust the medical provider you’re seeing? You may suspect that the doctor you’re seeing is more concerned about making your employer happy than your actual care – and you could be right. Doctors who make their living on a company’s dime may have some hidden biases that influence how they rate the severity of an injury, what restrictions they think an injured worker should have and when they allow an injured worker to return to duty. If you don’t think that your workers’ comp physician is giving you proper care, you do have some recourse: You can request a second opinion. You have to make your request in writing, and your employer has 14 days to either agree to the request or deny it. You can request the Industrial Commission’s intervention. If your employer denies your request for a second opinion, you can petition the Industrial Commission to grant your request. This is a one-time visit and no guarantee that the doctor will become your approved physician but it can be the first step in the right direction. You can ask the Industrial Commission to let you use the doctor you prefer. This could be a doctor wholly of your own choosing or the doctor you used for your second opinion, but the burden is on you to show why the change is appropriate. (This is why a second opinion can help.) When your workers’ compensation claim isn’t going as you’d hoped, it’s always best to learn more about your legal options.

When a truck is in a collision with a car, most people assume the trucker is at fault. Statistics from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) show this assumption is usually wrong. In 81% of cases, they found that the car driver was to blame for the crash with a truck. Most car drivers have never even sat in the cab of a truck, let alone tried to drive one. They do not understand how challenging it is. Therefore, when they encounter an 18-wheeler on the road, they act in a way that endangers you and them. Why do car drivers cause truck collisions? Here are some of the errors drivers of smaller vehicles make: They sit too close behind you: Something happens in front of you, and you need to slow. It could be another vehicle braking, a light turning red, or a pothole. It is not your fault if the car behind did not leave enough of a gap and crashes into the back of you. They pull too close in front of you: Some drivers are in such a hurry to pass that they take stupid risks and need to squeeze back under your nose to avoid getting hit by an oncoming vehicle. You might not be able to stop in time. They do not account for the wind: It should be obvious that strong gusts of wind can blow an 18-wheeler sideways. If a car is tight alongside, they cannot blame you if the wind blows you into them. They do not leave you room to turn: You need to turn left, so you indicate and pull out to swing into the turn. An impatient driver cuts up your inside and crashes into your turning cab. Car passengers often suffer worse injuries in a truck crash, so people focus on helping them. Yet, you have just as much right to receive compensation. Showing why the collision was their fault, not yours, will help.

If you are like most Greensboro residents, you are making your holiday lists and checking them twice this time of year. For many reasons, a lot of shopping will be done online. Yet, there are still must-have items that can make you venture out into the horde of shoppers crowding the aisles and jockeying for position in the parking lots. While shoppers are bustling for bargains, however, they may not realize the enhanced risks of injury they encounter during the height of the holiday shopping season. To keep yourself hale and healthy this holiday season, here are some tips to keep you and your loved ones safer while shopping. Plastic is safer than cash When shopping, avoid carrying lots of cash. If your pocket gets picked or your purse is stolen, your cash will be gone forever. But if it’s a credit or debit card, you can freeze it and not be responsible for the thief’s purchases (although some may set a $50 limit or less). Shop in groups Solo shoppers are much likelier to be targeted as victims by criminals during the holiday shopping season. Make plans to shop with a friend or two. Choose stores with visible security officers All stores have a duty to provide a safe space for their customers. That includes hiring sufficient security to patrol parking lots and the store’s premises to keep dangerous conditions from occurring. Simply seeing a visible presence of security guards on duty in a mall or shopping center is a deterrent to many thieves. Beware of crowded aisles Yes, you may be jostling for bargain merchandise, but remain aware of your surroundings. Aisles with heavy items stacked above shoulder height could come tumbling down on unsuspecting shoppers’ heads. This could cause catastrophic injuries or even death. If an accident occurs, seek help If you do wind up injured due to a store’s lack of security or maintenance, learn all that you can about the process to seek compensation for your injuries and other damages.

You’ve probably suffered a blow to the head at various points in your life. Examples could include clashing heads on the sports field, falling out of a tree or slipping on a wet floor. Most of the time, life carries on as normal after a minor head injury that does not result in lasting damage. Yet some blows to the head can be much more serious and have huge financial implications. What is a traumatic brain injury? The term traumatic brain injury (TBI) generally refers to serious brain injuries. They can result from direct impact to the brain, such as if you fall onto a metal spike and it penetrates your skull and goes into your brain tissue. Or it could occur when the brain hits the hard shell of your skull with force, such as when your head is thrown forward in a car crash. Let’s say you suffer a TBI in an accident. It could leave you in hospital for some time, with mounting medical bills as doctors do their best to limit the damage. You may leave the hospital needing long-term help to carry out everyday tasks. You might be unable to walk if the brain damage occurs in the part that controls your legs or unable to drive if it leaves you prone to dizzy spells that would make driving dangerous. The injury could leave you unable to speak or think as clearly as before, meaning you cannot return to your old job, as you can no longer do it effectively. If you suffer a head injury in an accident, it’s vital you get medical help to assess the full extent of the damage and legal help to fight for the total amount of compensation you will need to recover from your injuries as fully as possible and mitigate the financial consequences of your harm. If another’s negligence, recklessness or intentional wrongdoing contributed to the cause(s) of your situation, you may have strong grounds upon which to file legal action.

Many workplaces have a constant flow of vehicles delivering or taking away goods crisscrossing their premises. Others require smaller vehicles to move things about on-site or carry out tasks such as taking things down from a shelf or digging a hole. Any one of these vehicles could injure and kill a worker in an instant. Employers can do several things to increase the safety of their workers around vehicles: Define specific zones for specific tasks The loading bay is a classic example. Having a dedicated area for loading can help reduce the number of people that need to come into contact with vehicles. Define specific pedestrian pathways Warehouses should have lines marked on the floor to direct passengers safely around the building without entering the zones where a forklift could drop something onto their head or reverse into them. Implement one-way systems for drivers This can reduce the chance of a collision between two vehicles and the prospect of collisions between vehicles and pedestrians. Pedestrians only need to look one way, and drivers have a clearer view of any pedestrians ahead of them because there are no oncoming vehicles to obscure a driver’s view. Enforce strict speed limits Erecting signs with a low maximum speed is not enough. Someone needs to enforce those limits, as the faster a vehicle travels, the more harm it can do to someone on foot. Ensure vehicles have working reversing signals However annoying the sound of a reversing vehicle warning can be, it can help to save injuries and lives. Employers need to regularly check that they are functioning. You’ll need to learn more about worker’s compensation if you suffer a vehicle injury in your workplace. Working with an experienced attorney can help to ensure that you receive any compensation to which you are rightfully entitled.

Modern cars often come with much thicker roof support pillars than older vehicles. This is a safety design to increase strength and reduce the chance that the roof will cave in on the passengers if the vehicle rolls over in a crash. The problem is that thicker pillars reduce visibility. There are six pillars, two at the side of the front windshield, two at the side of the rear windshield and one midway down the side of each vehicle between the front and rear doors. Accommodating their extra width requires reducing the amount of visibility-providing glass. These pillars leave motorists with larger blind spots making it more likely that a driver will miss something happening outside and will cause (or fail to avoid) a crash as a result. One of the groups of people that suffer the most due to this safety feature is pedestrians. Figures from the U.S. show the percentage of people killed in road traffic accidents who are traveling as pedestrians has been climbing over the last decade or so. This trend fits with the period wherein the popularity of SUVs has risen. These larger vehicles have thicker pillars than the average family car. Design improvements could help There have been moves to add cameras outside these pillars that can relay information to the driver to help them perceive whatever may be in their blind spot. Some manufacturers are considering installation of sensors that can help detect a pedestrian in front of a car, and some manufacturers are looking at avoiding pillars altogether. Yet, in the meantime, the option every driver has is to be aware of their blind spot and take extra caution to check before maneuvering, especially in urban areas where pedestrians are a likely presence. Otherwise, an injured pedestrian or their surviving loved ones may do their utmost to hold you responsible for their losses.

It was once the case that men did most of the driving, designing and building of cars. So, it is perhaps understandable that, in those less enlightened times, they designed vehicles primarily to accommodate themselves. Yet nowadays, there are even more women than men who have driver’s licenses in the United States. There are also far more women who occupy positions of all kinds within the automotive industry. Yet manufacturers still design cars to meet the needs of men, and, as a result, women are far more likely to die or suffer serious injuries in a crash. American industries can be slow to change It’s not just the car industry that has lagged behind in realizing that companies should not design products utilized broadly by all adults to suit an average man alone. Women hikers have only recently benefitted from the production of female-specific waterproofs, backpacks and sleeping bags, for instance. Yet there’s a massive difference between getting sore shoulders because your pack is not designed for your body and dying because your seatbelt isn’t. Testers need to update their crash test dummies to reflect the diversity of adults in the U.S. The standard crash test dummy was designed to mimic the proportions of an average man in the 1970s: 171 pounds, 5 feet 9 inches tall. Many people, especially women, do not fit that profile. While there are some female crash-test dummies in usage now, reports suggest there is a long way to go in equaling the field and making cars that are just as safe for women and, indeed, other men whose bodies look nothing like your average crash-test dummy. Hopefully, improvements will continue to be made, but until then, you’ll just have to hope that the vehicle safety features you have will work well enough if you are involved in a collision. If they don’t, it may be worth speaking with a legal professional about seeking compensation for your injuries.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) compiles workplace accident statistics on a regular basis. This information helps to identify dangerous workplace trends so that regulators, employers and workers can take action to reduce the risk of occupational death or injury. One set of figures that all employers need to be aware of is the Fatal Four. It’s the leading four causes of workplace deaths in the U.S. These hazards also result in a staggering number of non-fatal injuries across the country every year as well. Falls Some employment industries, such as construction, are more likely to require employees to work high above the ground. Yet even a seemingly safe office job could require someone to scale a ladder to hang a banner or change a lightbulb. Falls from heights can lead to devastating injuries. Serious injuries can even occur if you fall while standing on the ground. For example, if you slip on a wet floor or step into an unmarked hole, you could get hurt. Being struck by objects People who are working while located above other employees on a construction site could drop things down on them. Boxes falling from high shelves could harm warehouse workers and moving machine arms can endanger factory workers. Electrocutions Employers must take steps to safeguard workers from the dangers of power cables that lie underground, on the ground or overhead. Even someone changing a lightbulb in the office could be electrocuted. Being caught in or between things Employers need to find ways to separate moving machinery from people, such as designating walkways and ensuring machinery and tools have functioning safety guards. Otherwise, becoming trapped can lead to serious harm. Unfortunately, even the most proactive employers can’t always prevent accidents from occurring. If you are injured in one of these ways, you’ll want help to understand more about the workers’ compensation claims process. Similarly, if you’ve lost a loved one in a work-related accident, you’ll want to speak with a legal professional about workers’ compensation death benefits.