Cruise control is a convenience included on many vehicles today. Cruise control is a way to automatically control the speed of your vehicle when driving. Instead of keeping your foot on the gas pedal and constantly shifting up and down a few miles per hour, you can set cruise control to stay at a more consistent speed. Many drivers use cruise control because it is convenient, allowing them to be more comfortable on long trips and it allows them to make sure they are under the speed limit. However, some drivers do not use cruise control because they worry it is more dangerous than driving normally.

Safety Depends on the Driver

A study published by a French foundation, VINCI Autoroutes Foundation for Responsible Driving, indicated that there are some disadvantages to using cruise control. The disadvantages were related more to the driver’s attentiveness than the mechanics of cruise control. When the drivers in the study had cruise control enabled, they were overall less attentive when driving and had longer reaction times.

Winters in the northern portion of the United States are often full of snowstorms and weather so cold it hurts to be outside. Illinois often exhibits this behavior as well, especially the northern portion of the state. The weather during the winter months can make for hazardous road conditions, and special care needs to be taken when driving in the winter to avoid collisions and injuries. According to the US Department of Transportation, every year over 116,000 people are injured in car crashes where the pavement is snowy, slushy, or icy. Using the tips below can help to prevent winter weather collisions.

Car Safety

One of the main components of safe driving during the winter months is making sure your vehicle is properly prepared for winter. In order to make sure your vehicle is prepared, you can do as many of the following as possible:

Automobile collisions can be as simple as a fender-bender, or cause fatalities. Thousands of pounds of metal colliding with each other at high speeds can be a recipe for disaster. Usually, car crashes are one vehicle hitting another, but occasionally there are multiple vehicle pile-ups or collisions. When multiple vehicles are involved in the collision, it may be difficult to determine who exactly is at fault and needs to pay damages. Determining the fault in a collision is key to a court case, and is made more difficult in multi-vehicle situations.

Modified Comparative Negligence

Fortunately, Illinois law has a system which helps determine the fault in collisions with multiple vehicles, called modified comparative negligence. With the modified comparative negligence doctrine, jurors can assign a percentage of fault to each party responsible and divvy up the damages based on the percent the plaintiff is responsible. If the plaintiff is not at fault at all, they will get more money, if they are at fault 20%, they will get 20% less than they normally would. This goes all the way up to 50%. If the plaintiff is found to be 50% or more at fault or negligent, they do not receive any damages.

One of the major uses of a bicycle has always been for children to ride. However, now there is an increase in cyclists of all ages. The increase is for a variety of reasons, including physical exercise and environmental consciousness. Each year from 2011-2017 also included an increase in cycling fatalities and injuries. In 2017 there were 783 bicyclists killed in motor vehicle crashes, with many more being injured. Compared to the number of motor vehicle fatalities, that may not seem like many, but most fatalities can be prevented by enacting some basic safety procedures.

Safety Tips

The first tip given to anybody, child or adult, riding a bicycle is to wear a helmet. A helmet protecting your head can prevent concussions or worse from happening when impacting the pavement or an obstacle. Many people do not wear a helmet because they don’t like the way it looks or feel it is unnecessary. If a bicycle crash does happen, people not wearing a helmet will wish they were wearing one.

According to the Illinois Department of Transportation, there were 1,090 traffic fatalities in 2017 in Illinois. Traffic fatalities may occur for multiple different reasons, but one of the most common reasons is traveling over the speed limit. Speeding decreases the time drivers have to react to events around them, and the faster a vehicle is going the harder it is to stop. Drivers who speed are more likely to be involved in a traffic accident which may cause fatal injuries.

Why Do So Many Drivers Speed When Driving?

Each person may have a different reason for driving above the speed limit. Some of the most common reasons are listed below.

Being involved in an automobile accident can be a traumatic experience. If you have been involved in a car accident and are considering filing a lawsuit, you should be aware of the statute of limitations for the lawsuit. Different types of lawsuits have different time limits, so it is important to be knowledgeable about the types of lawsuits and how long it is possible to file them. Once the time limit has expired, it is extremely rare for the court to consider the lawsuit unless some mitigating factor can be explained.

The main types of lawsuits that relate to vehicular collisions are the following:

• Personal injury: A personal injury lawsuit is filed because the victim was injured in some form during the incident. Occasionally, the injury or trauma may not present itself until much later on. This can be something as simple as whiplash, or more serious injuries. In most cases, the statute of limitations to file a personal injury lawsuit for a vehicular accident is the same as any other personal injury lawsuit, which is two years.
•  Wrongful death: This type of lawsuit will be filed when a representative of a deceased person believes a person was killed due to the legal fault of the defendant. The representative may be a family member, spouse, or child. The statute of limitations on wrongful death lawsuits is one year after the death of the deceased person.
•  Vehicle damage: Vehicle damage is included under Illinois law as personal property damage. If you are seeking damages due to an automobile collision there is a time limit of five years from the date of the collision for the lawsuit to be filed.

Results of Your Lawsuit

Car accidents are, unfortunately, not uncommon in the United States. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), there were an estimated 7,277,000 motor vehicle crashes that were reported to the police in 2016. Head injuries are common after car crashes, especially concussions, which can take days or even weeks to manifest. Many people who are suffering from a concussion do not even know that they have one because they do not know what signs to look for.

What Is a Concussion?

According to the Mayo Clinic, a concussion is a traumatic brain injury that can affect your normal functioning. A concussion occurs when you receive a violent blow to the head that causes your brain to slide back and forth against the walls of your skull. Concussions can be serious and can cause bleeding in or around the brain, which can lead to death if untreated.

Signs of a Concussion

Rarely, a concussion causes you to lose consciousness. Most of the time, concussions can be hard to detect if you do not know what you are looking for. If you have been in a car accident, be sure to look for these signs that you might have a concussion:

Any car crash is a complicated event - it can be difficult to determine the cause of any accident and contributing factors to any crash. When it comes to crashes involving trucks, the consequences can be dire. Because of the large size of these vehicles, truck accidents are deadly and survivors can experience more severe injuries than accidents involving other vehicles. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has conducted a study in an effort to determine the causes of serious crashes involving large trucks, which are defined as any truck with a gross weight of over 10,000 pounds.

Crash Causation Variables

In the study, three key variables were used to determine what caused truck crashes: critical events, critical reasons, and associated factors.

According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, slips, trips, and falls were the second leading cause of nonfatal injuries to workers in the U.S. and the third leading cause of fatal injuries to workers in 2016. Slips, trips and falls can cause serious injuries to workers and can result in you having to spend days away from work to heal broken bones or pulled muscles. Depending on the severity of your injuries, slips, trips and falls can render you permanently disabled from a spinal cord injury or even a brain injury.

Fluids or debris on the floor: One of the most common reasons employees slip or fall is because there is something on the floor that is making it slippery. Liquids or dry debris can both make the floor slippery and unsafe. Examples of these hazards can include:

• Water;
• Grease;
• Soap;
• Ice or snow;
• Dust, powder or granules; and
• Freshly mopped or waxed floors.

Walking surface irregularities: Trips, especially, can happen where there is no consistency in walking surfaces when there should be. These irregularities can be both indoors and outdoors. Walking surface irregularities can include:

It does not matter what industry you work in - there is always a chance that you can injure yourself at work. The first 24 hours after you injure yourself are crucial - your actions can determine how easy it will be to claim your workers’ compensation benefits and how strong of a claim you have. By taking the appropriate actions after a workplace injury, you can help make your worker’s compensation process a little bit easier.

1. Get Medical Help

The first thing you should do after you are injured at work is seek necessary medical attention, though where you get it from can be important. If your employer has a Preferred Provider Program (PPP), you should choose a doctor or hospital that is a part of that program. You have the choice of two physicians that are within your employer’s PPP, whose costs will be covered. If you choose not to be seen by physicians in your employer’s PPP, you can be seen by one physician of your choice, but further visits must be approved. If your employer does not have a PPP, you have the choice of any two providers.

Pedestrian accidents are not uncommon in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2016, around 193,366 pedestrians were injured in motor vehicle accidents and an estimated 5,987 pedestrians were killed in accidents. Pedestrian safety is especially important because at some point every day, we are all pedestrians. Compared to a vehicle, pedestrians are small and fragile, which is why extreme caution should be taken by drivers when they are around pedestrians, but pedestrians also have a responsibility to be safe and limit the possibility of an accident happening. By following these tips, both drivers and pedestrians can do their part to stay safe.

Driver Tips

• Always look out for pedestrians. Even if there is not a sidewalk, there may still be pedestrians walking on the side of the road.
• Be careful when driving at night or in bad weather. Pedestrians can seem to come out of nowhere and that is especially true when hard-to-see conditions are present. Do not speed in these conditions and always follow the rules of the road.
• You should expect pedestrians to be in a crosswalk and by law, you are required to yield to pedestrians who are using a crosswalk. Give yourself enough space between your vehicle and the pedestrian so other vehicles can see the pedestrian, too. Never pass other vehicles at a crosswalk - they are probably stopped for a reason and you could cause an accident.
• When you are in school zones or residential neighborhoods, drive slowly and cautiously. Children can jump in front of you in the blink of an eye - always follow the speed limit and go slower if need be.

Pedestrian Tips

Though the death and injury rate for workers in the United States has decreased since the inception of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) in 1970, workplace injuries and deaths are still reported today, many stemming from inadequate workplace safety precautions. Nearly 5,200 people were killed on the job in 2016 - which is about 14 deaths per day. While not all deaths are preventable, many of them are, which is why the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has developed certain standards to keep a safe workplace.

General Duty

In the “General Duty Clause” of the OSH Act, all employers have the responsibility of providing a safe workplace that does not contain any known hazards. This rule is a generalized version of other specific rules that OSHA has for certain industries. There are four groups of OSHA standards, which include:

The last thing anyone wants to deal with is filing a car accident claim. Car accidents are scary business and can leave you with not only physical injuries and pain but also emotional trauma. Though not all accidents can be prevented, many accidents can be avoided through safe driving practices. Injuries sustained during car accidents can be extensive, which is why you should try to avoid risky situations in the car at all times. Here are four tips to follow to help reduce your chances of a car accident:

1. Keep Your Attention on the Road

One of the biggest causes of accidents is distracted driving. You can be distracted by almost anything, but you should try to keep your attention on the road at all times. Many times, drivers are distracted by their cell phones, but the distraction is not always digital. Drivers can become distracted by other passengers in the vehicle, things outside of the vehicle or even something as simple as changing the air conditioning in the car.

All employees deserve to work in a relatively safe environment. By nature, some jobs are more dangerous than others, but they still must follow certain safety guidelines to prevent workplace injuries or deaths. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) provides a set of general and industry-specific guidelines for safety measures that should be taken in order to prevent injuries and death in the workplace. Unfortunately, not all workplaces always follow OSHA’s guidelines, which results in accidents that could have been easily prevented. Here are the most commonly cited violations that OSHA has reported during workplace inspections:

1. Fall Protection in Construction Industry

Fall protection violations were the most cited violation in 2017. This regulation states that construction employers have the duty to make sure that work and walking surfaces have enough strength and structure to hold employees. This regulation also states that there should be guardrails, safety nets or personal fall arrest systems in place when an employee is working in an area without a protected edge.

In almost every way, car accidents can be traumatic, affecting you emotionally, mentally and especially, physically. Even if the car accident was a minor one, you can come out of it with serious injuries that put a damper on your well being. These injuries can become costly medical bills and can cause you to lose out on wages at work. Thankfully, if you can successfully prove a personal injury car accident claim, you might be able to recover some of these lost expenses, but only if you have proof and documentation. Proper records and proof can be lifesavers when it comes to proving cases. Here are six tips on how to keep thorough records of your personal injuries:

1. Take Photographs

Having photographs available as evidence is one of the best ways to prove your case. Photographs are hard evidence and can help illustrate the extent of the damage from the accident. Be sure to take photos of:

Everyone is a pedestrian at some point during the day--whenever you are not in your vehicle, you are a pedestrian. Unfortunately, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has reported that pedestrian accidents and fatalities have been rising since 2009--one of the few groups to see an increase in fatalities. In 2016, there were nearly 6,000 pedestrian fatalities, the highest number of pedestrian fatalities in one year since 1990. In Illinois alone, pedestrians accounted for nearly 14 percent of traffic fatalities. Everyone is at risk for getting into an accident as a pedestrian and these accidents can cause serious and severe injuries, if not death. It is important to understand how you can do your part - as a driver and as a pedestrian--to keep yourself and others safe.

Risk Factors For Pedestrian Accidents

Fortunately, there are trends in who is involved in traffic accidents, the environment they take place in and when they take place. Trends like these are used to make decisions on how pedestrian accidents and fatalities are addressed.

One of the most traumatic things a family can go through is the loss of a family member through a workplace accident. Not only are you grieving for your loved one, you might be worried about your family’s financial future. Many American families sustain their standard of living by having two incomes. With the loss of one income, your family could be facing financial hardship. The Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act allows the spouses and children of the worker to collect death benefits of a deceased loved one who was killed on the job.

Who Can Receive Death Benefits?

When a worker is killed on the job, their surviving spouse and children who are under the age of 18 are entitled to death benefits. These are called primary beneficiaries. If there are no primary beneficiaries that exist, then the benefits can be paid to totally dependent parents of the deceased worker. If totally dependent parents do not exist, benefits can be paid to anyone who was at least 50 percent dependent on the worker before his or her death.

Picture it: you have just gotten off of work, you are on your way home and you have found yourself in the middle of rush hour. Traffic is moving at a snail’s pace, but as you are moving up a few feet, another driver from the lane over decides to cut you off and jump in front of you. You are probably not too happy about this and depending on the day you have had, this may be the tipping point. The anger you would be feeling is not uncommon--according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, nearly 80 percent of drivers have expressed significant anger or aggression behind the wheel at least once. Road rage is dangerous and can lead to serious car accidents, which is why it is important to understand how to handle road rage if you come across an aggressive driver.

What Is Road Rage?

The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) defines road rage as violent or aggressive behavior that is a result of a driver’s uncontrolled anger toward another driver. Often, the anger that is felt by those who have road rage is not necessarily toward the other driver, but is a projection of anger about something else, such as a long day at work. Examples of road rage include:

Most workers know that if they get injured on the job they are entitled to workers’ compensation. What some people may not know is that they are also eligible to receive compensation if they develop an occupational disease or ailment from continuous employment. Exposure to things like chemicals, dust, fumes, mold, or radiation can cause permanent and often irreversible damage to a person. The process to prove these types of cases can be tedious, but it does not have to be difficult with the right person’s help.

What Types of Diseases Are Covered?

The Illinois Occupational Diseases Act does not specifically like the types of diseases and ailments that are covered under the act. The act states that any employee who sustains any disablement, impairment or disfigurement or dies due to a disease that arises from their employment, is eligible for benefits. This means that any type of disease that is caused by employment is eligible for consideration under this act. Common types of diseases can include:

You have just gotten into a car accident and you are panicking because you do not know what to do next. This has never happened to you before, so you have no prior knowledge to draw from. Who do you call? What do you do first? What do you do if you are hurt? These are questions that will probably arise if you ever find yourself in the precarious situation of a car accident. You may think it is not likely to happen to you, but statistics say otherwise. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were over 6 million traffic accidents reported to police in 2016. Understanding the appropriate steps you should take after an accident can ensure that you are compensated for your damages.

Immediately After the Crash

Stay Safe