On behalf of Rosenberg, Kirby, Cahill, Stankowitz & Richardson | Jul 31, 2020 | Personal Injury
What happens when New Jersey drivers like you get into a crash? You will likely suffer from injuries. Some of the most common are head injuries. Among those, you are more likely to suffer from a traumatic concussion.
Severe concussions are no joke. But how can you tell that is what you are dealing with? What are the signs that differentiate a severe concussion from other head injuries?
The variety of concussion symptoms
According to Mayo Clinic, concussion injuries vary in severity. The severity depends on where the injury is. The amount of force involved in the trauma also contributes to this. The good news is severe concussions are easier to identify than mild ones. With a mild concussion, you may experience tenderness and headaches. You might have a few other symptoms, like trouble balancing. But on a whole, a mild concussion does not stand out much.
By contrast, severe concussions involve many physical and mental effects. These effects are easy for you or others around you to notice. Some examples of physical effects include:
- Severe nausea, dizziness or vomiting
- Crippling head pains
- The inability to fall asleep or wake up
- Disordered senses
- A lack of fine motor control
Identifying mental symptoms of concussions
You may have trouble identifying mental symptoms as the person living through them. But others around you can likely tell. For example, you may suffer from confusion. Amnesia is also common. It is especially common to forget incidents surrounding the injury itself. Short-term memory often suffers as well. This makes it hard for you to recall things that just happened.
If you notice any of these things, or a loved one notices, what next? You can seek medical attention. Only trained professionals can identify a concussive injury and decide how to treat it.
On behalf of Rosenberg, Kirby, Cahill, Stankowitz & Richardson | Jul 22, 2020 | Personal Injury
New Jersey is a modified comparative negligence state, meaning that you may be able to sue for damages after a personal injury even if you were partially at fault. Your eligibility to receive damages depends upon the relative degree of negligence a court attributes to each party, and whether or not that negligence constitutes proximate cause.
Understanding state interpretations of negligence and proximate cause may help determine whether your claim is worthwhile. When in doubt, a lawyer can help you assess your options.
Negligence
Personal injury claims essentially depend upon the way a court assigns negligence contributing to an injury. Negligence in layman’s terms is the failure to exercise the degree of care society expects of you. The law typically measures this according to how a reasonably prudent person would behave in your shoes.
Judges see negligence as a sliding scale between ordinary negligence, gross negligence, recklessness and willful misconduct. But these are not the same as a percentage of fault. Many personal injury cases are due to ordinary negligence. Courts treat more severe forms of negligence as particularly egregious.
Proximate cause
Negligence does not always result in injury. People can act carelessly or recklessly without negative consequences. Proximate cause is a legal doctrine meaning that the negligence you or the other party demonstrated directly contributed to the injury in question.
Comparative fault
When evaluating a personal injury claim, a court will assess negligence and proximate cause as a percentage. For example, if your negligence contributed 40% to the injury, and the other party contributed 60%, then you would be eligible for all assessed damages less 40%. Modified comparative negligence dictates that in New Jersey, you must be less than 50% at fault for the incident to collect damages.
On behalf of Rosenberg, Kirby, Cahill, Stankowitz & Richardson | Jul 8, 2020 | Motor Vehicle Accidents
Navigating a sea of vehicles when on foot presents challenges to pedestrians in even the most ideal of conditions such as in broad daylight, clearly marked crosswalks and slow vehicle speed limits.
Many new vehicles today come equipped with technology systems designed to detect other vehicles or pedestrians and to automatically bring a vehicle to a stop prior to colliding with those objects or people. Unfortunately, one AAA study found that these systems have a long way to go before they truly protect pedestrians.
Technology fails more than succeeds
The Verge reported on the results of the study that used both adult and child pedestrian dummies and vehicles on a closed test course. Vehicles operating at 20 miles per hour in the daytime featured pedestrian detection and automatic braking systems. The vehicles hit the adult pedestrian dummies in 60% of the test scenarios. Smaller child-sized dummies were hit by the vehicles in almost 90% of test scenarios.
Tests conducted in dark hours yielded even less success, resulting in AAA declaring the technology safety systems totally ineffective according to Consumer Reports. This is particularly troubling as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicates that three out of every four pedestrian deaths occur during dark hours.
Large vehicles pose big dangers
As pedestrian fatalities across the nation rise at alarming rates, experts look for reasons and ways to reverse the trend. The prevalence of large vehicles like sport utility vehicles may well contribute to the problem. When hit by tall vehicles, a pedestrian’s primary impact may occur in the head or vital organs in the torso instead of in the legs and hips.
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