By the numbers 675 Deaths: In 2011, 675 bicyclists were killed in crashes, a 10 percent increase from 2010. Overall, bike injuries and deaths are down for all age groups since 1975 except for men older than age 20. Source: Fatality Facts, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety 90% No Helmet: Over the past decade, roughly 90 percent of bikers killed in road accidents were not wearing helmets. Despite this fact, only 20 to 25 percent of…
Visibility, Location and Preparation Keys to a Safe Ride Biking is big in America. According to the League of American Bicyclists, there are more than 57 million cyclists out there at any given time rolling across our nation’s roads and trails. Transportation studies also show that bike trips tripled in the U.S. between 1977 and 2009. And while deaths among bicyclists younger than 20 actually dropped by 87 percent during that time period, fatal accidents…
Bike Safety Tips for Adults As spring spreads across the nation, bikers are popping up as regularly as the lilacs, magnolias and daffodils. Biking among adults has undergone somewhat of a renaissance in America, according to various transportation studies. And why not? Biking is great exercise, easy on the environment and perfect for sightseeing. But any time you mix bikes with motor vehicles, accidents can happen. Before you saddle up for your next ride, you…
Keith Hebeisen, partner, and Sarah King, associate at Clifford Law Offices, co-authored an article for the summer issue of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association Journal entitled “The Power of Informed Consent.” The doctrine “imposes upon medical professionals a pre-treatment duty to inform the patient of the material medical information relevant to the proposed treatment, specifically information, that may affect the patient’s decision concerning the treatment,” the authors wrote. The authors, in citing various cases and…
With the summer season lurking around the corner, it’s not just mercury that’s on the rise; work zone fatalities also tend to spike during this time of year. In 2008 alone, the Federal Highway Administration reported 720 work zone fatalities, and most occurred during the months of June, September and October. With June on the horizon, there is no better time to remind motorists to slow down in work zones and prevent fatalities by paying…
Question: Can a person be successful in a product liability case if he or she did not use a product properly or in accord with the directions on the product? Rich: They certainly may be, yes. And obviously the extent to which a person did not properly use a product may become an issue and may give rise to contributory negligence or assumption of the risk. But what we often see is that a product…
Robert A. Clifford, senior partner at Clifford Law Offices, closed out a three-hour program and spoke to a group of lawyers on closing arguments at the Young Lawyers Section Trial Techniques Seminar at the Chicago Bar Association (CBA). Clifford, along with Colin Smith of Holland & Knight, William Spiro of Law Office of William B. Spiro, and the Hon. James Shapiro of the Cook County Circuit Court, spoke on the various elements of a trial…
Question: Do I need to have the product to file a product liability case? Rich: For all practical purposes, yes. And I certainly caution consumers to keep and preserve any product that they believe have caused them injury as a result of any defective design. That’s unquestionably the most important aspect of any product liability case. The product is going to be evaluated by us and our experts to determine why the product was defective…
When the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) discovered that 81.5 percent of those who died in early morning (3 a.m.-4 a.m.) automobile accidents from 2008 to 2012 were not wearing seat belts, it wasted no time in launching a campaign to help reduce the number of fatalities in Illinois auto accidents. That campaign is known as the 2013 Click It or Ticket mobilization, which runs now through Memorial Day weekend. IDOT, along with state police…