Nassau County personal injury Law Blog

The accessibility, affordability, ease of using electronic devices and the need for society to constantly be connected with others, has increased distracted driving in recent years. Today everyone has a handheld device or smartphone and people often text, talk on phone or check the internet. However, using such devices while driving is one the leading causes of distracted driving.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration distracted driving is any activity that a driver of a car engages in which takes their attention away from the main task of driving. Text messaging, for example, requires drivers to take their eyes off the road for a total of 23 seconds. In 2011 alone over 3300 people were killed and nearly 387,000 people were injured in car accidents as a result of distracted drivers. Anyone who has been injured by a distracted driver should contact a Nassau county car accident attorney.

After a fatal drunk driving accident in New York, the authorities may choose to prosecute the responsible party for driving while intoxicated, vehicular manslaughter or other crimes. For the family of the victim, seeing the driver convicted may bring some measure of justice or feelings of closure, but it often doesn't help much with the financial burdens that follow a fatal car accident.

A Nassau County jury recently convicted a man in connection with a 2011 drunk driving crash that left a man dead. At his sentencing hearing, the court gave the man the maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison. The conviction reportedly represents just the third time a Nassau County court has convicted someone of the charge depraved indifference homicide in a DWI accident.

According to authorities, a 59-year-old woman who was walking on a road was fatally struck and killed by a New York driver. The driver is facing manslaughter and drunk driving charges. The tragic and untimely loss of a loved one due to the negligence of another is hard to fathom, but the family of an accident victim may be entitled to compensation and may benefit from contacting a Nassau County wrongful death attorney.

The incident happened at around 8:30 pm. The 44-year-old driver left the scene after hitting the woman, but authorities later found her in a nearby home. The woman's blood alcohol level was 0.21, which is nearly twice the legal limit of 0.08. Criminal charges in connection with this incident have been filed against the woman. The woman who was killed was apparently visiting her family.

Movement around a huge, congested city like New York relies on a smoothly running public transportation system. Buses, trains, taxis and ferries can carry many hundreds of thousands of people around every day. Unfortunately, not all public transportation is entirely safe. Accidents happen more often than moist people realize. When accidents happen on public transport, large numbers of passengers can get injured.

A case in point is the ferry crash in January when a Seastreak ferry that smashed into Manhattan Pier 11 on the way over from Queens. In that single accident alone, 85 people were injured. Fortunately only one person was seriously injured and the ferry itself was not severely damaged. However, the investigations into the cause of the crash are still continuing, with no real result at present. The recently released preliminary report by the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) was inconclusive.