County liable for woman killed after making several 911 calls

Athens Township: Delayed emergency response leaves resident questioning readdressing

From The Evening Times:

     "Lockhart Street resident Patricia Simmons is making sure everybody knows where her home is following a March 12 emergency in which responders couldn’t find her house.  Near midnight on that night Simmons, who lives at 552 W. Lockhart St. in Athens Township, had begun to choke, and co-resident Bill Creedon called 911. After a while of waiting for Greater Valley EMS, Simmons, who could barely speak at that point, called 911 again herself.  “I could hardly stand it,” said Simmons. “I picked up the phone and said, ‘Where are you? I can’t breathe.’ It could have ended up in tragedy. I’m so close to the hospital, it should take only three minutes. It took 20 minutes to get to the hospital.”  She added that when she arrived at the hospital she had a significant amount of water in her lungs.  Simmons’s residence is the first house beyond the border of Athens Township on the south side of West Lockhart Street, while homes across the street are counted as a part of Sayre Borough up to Pennsylvania Avenue. "

PennDOT construction workers authorized to write police arrest reports

This should be interesting....

To combat these unsafe drivers, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation highway crews are writing more and more police arrest reports targeting dangerous driving through construction zones.

The road crews only have the ability to make the initial report. The reports are then sent to the proper policing agency for further investigation. If the police find the driver was in violation of the law, then a citation is issued.

“Someone who drives in and puts another’s life in jeopardy, we follow that up,” Mike Cotter, press safety officer for District 4-0, said Wednesday as a PennDOT crew prepared for pothole work on Middle Road.

“Workers are so vulnerable, because they are so close to vehicles. Any kind of erratic driving puts them at risk,” Cotter added.

Since 1970, 10 workers in District 4-0 have been killed at construction sites as a result of drivers. The district encompasses Luzerne, Lackawanna, Wyoming, Wayne, Susquehanna and Pike counties.

Unhealthy neglect of CDL standards in Pennsylvania

This is an editorial in the Towanda Daily Review on an item that we already wrote about in our library section.  You can see our article here on unfit and unhealthy truck and bus drivers.

From the Editorial....

In 2006, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, 5,300 people died and another 126,000 were injured in accidents involving large commercial vehicles. In 12 percent of those crashes, the professional driver was found to have a physical impairment that contributed to the accident, from heart disease to sleep apnea.

Motorcycle head injuries up sharply since Pa. changed law

From Philly.com:

Motorcycle head injuries have spiked significantly since the state repealed its law requiring riders to wear helmets, a new study released yesterday found.

The study, conducted by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, showed a 32 percent increase in motorcycle-related head-injury deaths and a 42 percent increase in head-injury hospitalizations in the two years following the law's repeal in 2003.

Twenty states - including New Jersey, New York, Maryland and West Virginia - have laws requiring all riders to wear helmets.

But in Pennsylvania, only motorcyclists under 21 and riders with fewer than two years' experience who have not taken a safety course are required to wear helmets.

The average cost to treat a head injury in Pennsylvania is $88,000, according to Clare Collins, a spokeswoman for the University of Pittsburgh's School of Public Health.

Kristen Mertz, the study's lead author, said researchers looked at both head injuries and other types of injuries.

"The relatively large increase in head-injury deaths and hospitalizations after the repeal suggests that the law was protecting riders," she said.

Still, motorcycle activists argue they do not need the government to tell them how to ride.

"The government has a responsibility to individuals, and I think they are overstepping their bounds" when they want to start getting involved in helmet laws, said Charles Umbenhauer, lobbyist for Pennsylvania ABATE, a motorcyclist organization that opposes helmet laws.

In a statement issued yesterday, ABATE called the helmet debate an "endless obsession to market one single item of riding gear as the 'solution' to motorcycle deaths and injuries."

Family awarded $5.1 for man killed by drunk driver at work site

A jury awarded $5.1 million to the family of a man who was struck and killed by a drunk driver while working at a road construction site. Donald Lee Fincher Jr. hit Frank Claborn as he was providing security for a construction company that was renovating the West Sam Houston Toll Road. His counsel argued that Fincher was nearly three times over the legal blood-alcohol limit. The family claimed that Claborn was conscious and in pain for about an hour before he died. Fincher stipulated to liability. He offered a consent judgment, but Claborn's wife wouldn't make a counter offer and wouldn't consider a settlement without a trial.

Claborn v. Fincher

Man dies in ATV accident

From The Towanda Daily Review:

"A fatal crash occurred in Fox Township, Sullivan County, at 2:12 a.m. on Sunday when Christopher Robinson, 25, of Toughkenamon, was driving an ATV east on Picnic Ground Road, according to state police.

***This is similar to my rantings of wearing seat belts.  Wearing a helmet while driving an ATV (all terrain vehicle) is such a simple act that might save your life.  Riding ATV's can be very dangerous in and of themselves.  But, some, like the Yamaha Rhino, are actually defectively designed and are dangerous. 

The Yamaha Rhino is excessively prone to roll over during turns even at low speeds because of inherent flaws in its design. Yamaha has been aware for years of serious injuries and deaths of drivers and passengers in rollover accidents, but have yet to modify the Rhino's design to correct for its stability problems.