Dallas, Texas Personal Injury Blog

A major Texas newspaper recently published an extensive report on the dangers of elder abuse and neglect in nursing homes. After a lengthy investigation, The Dallas Morning News found that license revocation and cancellation of government contracts have almost disappeared as options for punishing residential facilities that provide negligent or abusive care.

The Dallas Morning News also pointed out that legislative changes have undermined the role of Dallas nursing home abuse lawyers as nursing home watchdogs. Texas lawmakers have also reduced fines and implemented "industry-friendly" oversight policies.

According to the National Safety Commission, a highway and traffic safety organization, Thanksgiving weekend is the most-traveled holiday period of the year. Typically, more than 90 percent of Thanksgiving travelers do so by car, resulting in an increased number of car accidents simply because of the higher number of vehicles on the road. When combined with the risk factors added by holiday travel, though, the threat of being injured in a car accident around Thanksgiving is even greater.

The National Safety Commission also reports that Thanksgiving is the deadliest holiday period of the year - in 2008, for example, 389 people were killed and thousands were injured in Thanksgiving motor-vehicle accidents, or accidents from 6:00 pm on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to midnight on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

A Texas family is grieving after a motor vehicle accident killed their three-year-old child. The boy's father was driving near Oak Hill when his car veered into oncoming traffic. He overcorrected, causing a vehicle rollover. Although the father and another young child survived, the boy died at the scene.

Adding to the tragedy is the fact that the boy's life may have been spared had his father taken appropriate safety precautions. Local news reported that the boy was not in a child safety seat at the time of the crash.

Texas, like many other states, requires all children who are either age seven or under or less than 57 inches tall to be properly restrained in a child safety seat at all times.

Crashing into a police car at the scene of a fatal car accident is probably not the way you want to end your night, especially if you have been drinking and driving. Yet that is exactly what happened to a man in El Paso County.

This particular Texas motor vehicles accident brings up many legal issues.

Who is responsible for the injuries and deaths caused in the fatal car accident? What compensation will the victims and the victims' families be able to recover? And what will happen to the drunk driver who ran into a parked police car while police were investigating the accident?

A Texas law goes into effect today (September 1, 2011) that will change speed limits on Texas roads. House Bill 1353, which was passed by the Texas Legislature and signed into law by Governor Rick Perry, gives the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) permission to increase the speed limit on some state highways to 75 mph. The law also repeals nighttime speed limits and truck speed limits.

State officials, legislators, Dallas motor vehicles accident attorneys, truck drivers and others debate whether changing the speed limit on Texas roads will lead to more accidents.

In April, Texas joined in the national campaign for motorcycle safety called "Share the Road." This campaign is organized by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) explained that the campaign's goal is to shed light on the unsettlingly high number of motorcycle fatalities and Texas motorcycle crash trends in recent years.

In Texas alone, motorcyclist fatalities accounted for 14 percent (434) of all traffic crash fatalities in 2009. Another 5,800 motorcycle riders suffered serious injuries that year. TxDOT has estimated that, if drastic safety reforms are not implemented soon, the state's motorcycle fatality toll will double within the next four years.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Fourth of July is the weekend that sees the most fatal drunk driving accidents. In fact, 50 percent of all Fourth of July car accidents are caused, at least in part, by alcohol.

In Texas alone, there were more than 330 DUI-related auto accidents in 2010. This year, the Texas Department of Transportation increased DUI patrol on its highways during the Fourth of July holiday in hopes to reduce that number. Its "No Refusal" campaign (which ran from July 1^st through July 5^th) led to the arrest of 45 drunk drivers in Dallas alone and hundreds across the state. This drunk driving campaign was focused on getting blood samples from drunk drivers who refused to take a breath test.

We frequently hear stories of cars, trucks and other motor vehicles hitting pedestrians and causing serious injury or death. According to a recent report by Transportation for America, there were more than 47,700 pedestrian deaths and more than 688,000 pedestrian injuries in the first decade of 2000. That's more than one pedestrian accident every 10 minutes!

The same report lists Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth among the top ten most dangerous metropolitan areas in the country for pedestrians. A key reason for this designation involves the way the roads are set up, often without the signals and sidewalks that pedestrians need to stay safe. In fact, most pedestrian accidents occur on roadways without these pedestrian aids.