Why does visibility matter on the roads?
Many crashes occur because one person does not see another or they do not see them in time to avoid them. Despite this reality, most people assume that others can and will see them as they travel.
There are several factors that increase the risk that a motorist or large commercial vehicle operator will fail to spot others. These are just a few.
Not expecting to see others
A driver on a rural road who hardly ever sees another vehicle when driving back from town at one in the morning may be surprised when someone does appear. Or a driver might not expect to see someone on a motorcycle in late February and look straight past anyone who is traveling on two wheels. This phenomenon is called inattentional blindness and is down to how the brain works. To avoid overload, the brain only perceives what it expects to see.
Distraction
You could be waving an orange flag and blowing a whistle, and some drivers still won’t notice you. Some people are so engrossed in their phones or in programming the satnav that they fail to notice anything around them.
Being hard to see
If you drove a dark car on a dark night with no lights on your vehicle, you would not expect others to see you. Yet many people fail to realize visibility is a sliding scale, and the further you drift toward not being visible, the more likely that others will miss you.
The more you can do to become visible, the better. Think lighter colored cars, turning on your headlights early, lighting up your bicycle and wearing your white jacket instead of your black one to walk to the bar at night.
While it is other people’s duty to watch out for you, making yourself hard to miss may save you from injury and could help you show that they were at fault if a crash occurs.
Workers’ compensation exists to compensate employees injured in the line of duty. If you have been involved in a workplace accident that requires medical attention and possible time off work, you may be entitled to workers’ compensation benefits.
However, the process is not so straightforward, and you can make missteps that could hurt your chances of enjoying these benefits.
Failing to report your injury
It is important to inform your employer in writing as soon as a workplace accident occurs. Failing to do so might draw questions about the severity of your injuries or their actual connection to your work activities. Furthermore, North Carolina law requires that a workplace accident is reported within 30 days. If that period lapses, your employer could dispute or deny your claim.
Not getting medical attention
Your well-being should always come first, which is why it is necessary to visit a doctor after a workplace injury. If you do not seek medical attention in a timely manner, you essentially have no proof that you were hurt. In addition, prompt medical treatment after an incident helps draw a connection between your work activity and your injuries that’s hard to dispute.
Failing to keep records
It is crucial to keep an accurate record of your workplace accident – where it occurred and the circumstances leading to your injuries. A detailed summary of the time you spent off work, and any other losses the workplace accident caused will go a long way toward affirming your case.
These common mistakes may jeopardize your workers’ compensation claim, and it is necessary to be aware of the steps to take following a workplace accident. Above all, it’s crucial to protect your legal rights as a worker. The accident may set you back a little, but with adequate compensation, you can get your life back on track.
T-boned at work? Here’s what you should know
While at work, you are expected to travel often. You go to different field sites and travel to your customers. It’s a normal part of your job to be behind the wheel, but being on the road so much does put you at a higher risk of being in an auto collision.
That’s why it may not be surprising that you were hit. At an intersection, the person coming from your right didn’t stop at their red light. Your vehicle was T-boned, and you now have significant injuries.
T-bone accidents are among the worst for victims
T-bone crashes, crashes in which you’re hit from the side, can cause significant damage to your vehicle and cause severe injuries.
Problematically, vehicles don’t have crumple zones or much room between you and another vehicle when hit from the side. While you may have some extra room for protection if you’re hit on the passenger side, any crash direct to the driver’s side has the potential to lead to serious or fatal injuries.
T-bone crashes are among the worst because:
- The side impact is more likely to lead to direct impact injuries
- Less crumpling means your body has to absorb more force
- Not all vehicles have side-impact airbags, and side impacts aren’t likely to set off the front airbags. As a result, you may be more likely to hit your head on the window or wheel
Essentially, you have less protection at this angle, so your injuries may be much worse.
What should you do if you’re injured in a crash while at work?
The good news about being in an auto collision while on the clock is that you should be able to seek workers’ compensation. Workers’ compensation should cover the cost of your medical care. It may also cover your lost wages if you have to miss work for an extended period of time.
Even if the other driver doesn’t have insurance, you’ll have coverage in this kind of crash if you’re on the clock when it occurs. Let your employer know that you’ve gotten hit as soon as possible, so you can begin putting together a claim for workers’ compensation.
The force of a car crash could lead to many different kinds of severe injuries. If you compare it to a brain or spinal cord injury, a broken bone may not seem like a very serious medical issue. People can still work with broken bones and often recover fully with the right medical care.
However, some fractures can cause lasting medical issues and could lead to tens of thousands of dollars in medical treatment. One of the scenarios when a broken bone from a car crash will lead to extensive financial losses and a longer recovery is when the bone breaks into multiple pieces.
Also called a comminuted fracture, this kind of break requires a more careful approach to an insurance claim or personal injury lawsuit. Otherwise, someone could be left with massive uncovered expenses.
You will need more medical intervention to heal
When your bone breaks cleanly in one place, a doctor can diagnose it with an x-ray and may be able to set it manually. They will then immobilize the body part with a cast and potentially provide you with pain management resources. After the cast comes off, physical therapy may be necessary to regain your strength and the range of motion lost while your body heals the broken bone.
Recovering from a comminuted fracture is much more difficult. There may be advanced imaging tests necessary to your diagnosis. You may require surgery for the doctor to set the bone. If there are small pieces of bone, you may require implanted pins or metal rods to reinforce the bone and stabilize it as it heals. You may require traction while in the hospital to ensure that you do not use the affected body part before your body recovers.
The overall cost for a comminuted fracture is much higher than a simple, stable fracture. Although car insurance in North Carolina generally includes $30,000 or more in medical coverage, that may not be enough with a severe fracture. Your stay in the hospital and surgery could cost more than that, and you may have wages that you lose to add to your claim as well.
Creating a realistic estimate of the costs you have incurred will help you seek appropriate compensation after a significant motor vehicle collision.
When your body is healthy, your brain sends signals to your limbs to make them move as required. It’s automatic and something most people never think about.
If you lose a limb in a workplace accident, it’s something you will have to think about. That is one of the major weaknesses of prosthetic replacements – controlling them does not come automatically. You need to twitch your muscles in a particular sequence to get your replacement limb to move the way you want.
Artificial intelligence could change that
Scientists have developed a system where they can insert an electrode into a person’s limb to receive the nerve signals that the brain sends. They then use artificial intelligence (AI) to interpret those signals and instruct the prosthetic limb on what to do.
They claim to have achieved a 99.2% success rate when trialling it with people who have lost an arm. The system relies on a person having the opposite arm working. They put a date glove on the working hand, and this captures the nerve signals that the brain uses to instruct the arm to do certain movements. The AI system can use that information to learn to interpret what the brain is trying to tell the other arm to do.
How good is it?
At present, the system is slower than a natural arm, and some movements are still difficult to achieve. Yet anything that helps regain mobility could be a massive plus for those who lose a limb.
Technology like this will not come cheap. That is why it is crucial to understand how to get maximum compensation if you suffer an amputation injury at work.
If you work in a warehouse, your employer has a duty to take measures to keep you safe: While accidents can happen, in many cases, they could have been avoided if employers had done more.
Most warehouses use a variety of moving machines, such as forklifts which pose a hazard to workers walking around on foot.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is in overall charge of workplace safety in the country: They set out a series of recommendations that employers should (or in some cases must) follow to protect workers. Here is what they recommend for keeping pedestrians safe in warehouses:
Understand the danger points
While there have been occasions of workers being injured when strong winds blow the warehouse roof off, most injuries are more mundane.
Top hazards include:
- Being run over, crushed or speared by forklifts
- Falling from one level to the next
- Being struck by a falling object
Employers need to ensure forklift drivers have adequate training and take steps to protect pedestrians. For instance:
- Yielding the right of way to anyone on foot at all times
- Stopping and sounding their horn at intersections
- Using reversing alarms and flashing lights
- Looking where they are going
- Using spotters where needed
Employers must provide protection where people could fall four feet or more. This could be guardrails, safety nets, or personal fall protection systems. They should also reduce the potential for contact between pedestrians and vehicles and pedestrians and falling objects by allocating safe walkways.
Hopefully, your employer will do all these things. Regardless, you should be able to claim workers’ compensation if injured at work. Seek legal help to find out more.
Could Red Light Therapy Help Injured Workers?
If injured at work, your first question might be, “How soon can I go back to work.” Therapeutic intervention can do a lot to move that date forward.
One thing that might help you return to work sooner is red light therapy. There is still a lack of consensus in the medical field about what red light therapy can or cannot do. Ongoing research suggests it might be able to help in various ways:
1. Reducing chronic pain and inflammation
Research has shown red light therapy can do this for animals with particular conditions. Whether it can do the same for humans is less clear. Chronic pain can keep people off work for years, as well as making it difficult to sleep or enjoy everyday life. Anything reducing it would be welcome.
2. Speeding muscle repairs
Studies suggest red light therapy can help muscle repair and growth. You can severely damage a muscle in a workplace accident, or it can waste away through lack of use, such as when you break a leg. The faster your muscles return to previous levels of strength, the better.
3. Helping the brain
Researchers believe the therapy can help those who suffer brain injuries by improving blood and oxygen flow to the brain, enabling new neurons and synapses to form.
4. Encouraging wounds to heal faster
Unhealed wounds risk infection, which could lead to serious health problems needing more time off work, and potentially causing a risk to life. Faster healing reduces that risk.
Depending on the workplace injury you sustain, any one of those four benefits might be worth investigating. Consider legal help to understand if you might be entitled to receive these or any other kinds of treatment as part of a workers’ compensation claim.
How Common Are Forklift Accidents?
Many workplaces use forklift trucks. Not only do they increase efficiency, but they reduce wear and tear on workers’ bodies by reducing how much lifting of heavy or awkward items they need to do.
Forklifts also reduce the risk of ladder falls, as instead of someone climbing a ladder to reach a shelf, a forklift does it for them.
That all sounds great, yet forklifts can be incredibly dangerous to the employees they help.
Each year numerous employees are killed or maimed in forklift accidents
Statistics for U.S. workplaces in 2020 show that 7,299 employees required one or more days off work due to a forklift injuring them. Another 78 people died as a result of their injuries.
Injuries can happen to those near the forklift as well as those driving
Pedestrians accounted for 36% of the injured. It can be hard to hear forklifts, especially in a noisy workplace requiring ear protection. They can also move quickly, so even if you checked that it was clear, they could creep up on you in an instant.
Crashing into someone and crushing them or spearing them are not the only risks. A forklift could easily topple something off a high shelf onto someone on the other side or backward onto the driver.
People could also be at risk from a load already on the forks if it causes the vehicle to fall over or if the load drops off the forks.
Employers can do a lot to reduce the chance of forklift accidents. Yet they may still happen even then. If you are injured at work, seek legal help to understand your compensation options.
Premises liability is the legal term for the risk that property owners assume when people visit their building. Either the owner or their insurance company may have to pay if someone gets hurt on their property.
Many premises liability claims have to do with negligence maintenance. Think of slip-and-fall accidents as an example. Failing to keep the floors clean and dry could lead to someone suffering a life-altering brain injury.
However, any serious personal loss that results from improper or negligent care of a property could lead to a premises liability claim. If you were the victim of a crime at or near a business, does that mean you could file a claim against the company?
Was the crime reasonably foreseeable and potentially preventable?
When determining if a business has any responsibility for a crime you experienced, you have to ask yourself if they could have reasonably foreseen the crime. If there has been a rash of muggings or assaults near their parking lot in recent years, then you could potentially argue that the business could foresee the incident.
The next question is whether the business took any steps to prevent crime from occurring. Inadequate security can easily lead to premises liability claims. Motion-activated parking lot lights, security cameras and the presence of a security professional could all go a long way toward deterring criminal activity at a business or on its property.
The less a company invests in keeping visitors safe, the stronger your claim and the bigger the losses you suffered in the crime may be. This is why you may benefit from bringing a claim against the business. They’ll likely have the necessary coverage to pay on your claim. Learning more about premises liability claims can help you asked for the compensation you deserve.
You work hard to support yourself and provide for your family. If you are like most working adults in North Carolina, you want to do an honest job and receive a fair wage for it. You may even overlook the pains and aches that come with doing the same job for years or several decades.
However, that pain in your forearms or ache in your hips when you leave work every day could be your body warning you that you have pushed yourself too hard. Doing the same work every day for years can take its toll on your body. You may develop a repetitive stress injury.
How repetitive stress injuries occur and affect your work
Every day, for eight hours a day, you answer the phone and type at a computer or grip a steering wheel. Maybe you chop vegetables as a prep cook or stock the shelves at your local grocery store.
While you may be quite good at your job because you have done it for so long, constantly performing the same physical tasks will eventually cause damage to the parts of your body that you use the most. Office workers, for example, are at increased risk of developing carpal tunnel syndrome. Those who lift all day could injure their arms or their backs.
Any motion that you perform repetitively, especially without good posture or the right ergonomic support, could put you at risk of developing a repetitive stress injury.
You can’t necessarily cure a repetitive stress injury
Those who develop pain symptoms or experience reduced strength and range of motion due to performing the same job tasks for years may require a leave of absence to rest their bodies. In some cases, they may require corrective surgery. Other times, occupational or physical therapy can help reduce the symptoms they experience on the job.
In many cases, however, repetitive stress injuries have permanent medical consequences. An individual may not be able to continue doing the same work without re-injuring themselves. Some people may experience a permanent reduction in their income or earning potential because of a repetitive stress injury. These workers may need permanent partial disability benefits from workers’ compensation.
If you can’t make as much money as you once stood because of long-term medical consequences due to a work injury, workers’ compensation can at least reduce how much income you lose. Knowing the different situations in which people may need workers’ compensation benefits can help you determine if you need to apply for them.
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