Virtually everyone has been cut off while driving and had irrational rage boil over. Most don’t act on that rage, but some do.

It would be nice if everyone knew how to drive defensively. However, most people don’t and some just get in their vehicles and aim them in the general direction they want to go. Some get from point A to point B, some don’t, and that’s because accidents happen. This is when you need the services of a seasoned Austin personal injury attorney to obtain compensation for your injuries as a result of a car wreck.

Generally speaking, there are several causes for vehicle wrecks and some of them are quite serious. For instance, we all know without being told that drunk driving is the worst offense on the road and the deadliest. But people still do this with depressing regularity. Thanks to driving and driving, there is one American killed every half hour across the nation and the numbers shoot up on weekends.

Surprisingly enough, sleepy drivers are far more common than we would like to think. If you don’t get enough sleep and try driving a long distance all tuckered out, you’re asking for trouble. And if you don’t drive while fatigued, who is to say the other guy isn’t driving like that and you are about to be involved in a potentially fatal wreck?

You’d think if you spent any amount of time on the road, that you would maintain your vehicle in good working condition. Unfortunately, many people just take their ride for granted, hop in and take off, never checking the tires, whether the lights work or not or check the workings under the hood. This is an accident waiting to happen. And when accidents like this do happen, only a skilled and dedicated Austin personal injury attorney can help pick up the pieces.

There are way too many people who jump in their vehicles and just take off – without looking both ways. Whatever happened to road safety and driving with the other person in mind? Very few people these days do the routine shoulder check when pulling out of a parking spot or when changing lanes. Do they think they are the only car on the road?

Along with not shoulder checking, there are a multitude of drivers who ignore traffic rules, blow stop signs, don’t signal when they need to and don’t pay attention to where they are going. While this may be due to texting, etc., it is also due to just plain inattention. No one is immortal when it comes to driving a vehicle and it behooves people to remember that.

In other words, pay attention. Those who don’t find will themselves having a personal discussion with their insurance company or injured or dead. Research shows that distracted driving causes at least 30 percent of all accidents in the U.S. It is getting to be that distracted driving is almost worse than drunk driving.

Road rage is a real problem. If you have ever seen someone in the grip of road rage, you know it isn’t pretty and you also know that if they crash, it will be spectacular. The aggression inherent in these episodes is horrific and the actions of drivers like this can kill others. Put a lid on road rage and just get on doing what you were doing and let it be. You will definitely outlive the person who gives in to the rage and acts up and out. Remember, cars are not the only things recalled by their maker.

Robert W. Lee is an Austin personal injury lawyer for The Lee Law Firm. If you need an Austin personal injury lawyer, contact an Austin personal injury attorney from The Lee Law Firm. Visit RWLeelaw.com.

The most well known myth about bikers is that they cause a lot of accidents. The truth is, other vehicles are usually at fault.

While you may not know this, it’s a fact that just about one out of two fatal motorcycle wrecks involves another vehicle. If you’ve taken a good hard look at any of the latest accident statistics, you’ll be shocked to find out that just about every 90 seconds there is a biker fatality in the U.S. That’s frightening in terms of the toll it takes on human lives; those left behind.

The statistics are as high as they are largely due to the fact the bikers have very little, if any, kind of protection when they do get into a wreck. Many have up close and personal encounters with the pavement and leave most of their skin behind. Many suffer multiple bone breaks and fractures, not to mention spinal cord trauma, head damage and crushed or amputated limbs. Gruesome, but that’s the hardcore truth.

You would think if a biker had the potential to get into a smack up, whether they are anticipating it or not, they would wear protective helmets. Sadly, the statistics are showing that out of roughly 6,000 deaths every year, just about 60 percent of the riders were not wearing helmets. This isn’t to say that they may not have been fatally injured in another manner even while wearing the helmet, but it’s been proven that those helmets do help bikers avoid traumatic brain injury.

If you think rush hour traffic is a major pain in the posterior, try riding it out on a motorcycle. You’re out there hanging in the wind, exposed to big trucks that don’t see you, negligent drivers who don’t see you and various other hazards, like lousy roads, which will throw you over the handle bars into traffic if you hit something the wrong way.

And that isn’t the worst of it all. The worst thing is that most people think motorcycles and their riders are the authors of their own misfortunate accident. This actually isn’t the case in many crashes. The “at fault” driver is usually another vehicle, and the reason? They don’t see the biker. Nonetheless, if an accident happens and the biker is killed due to the negligence of another, this is a wrongful death and the family of the victim has the right to file a lawsuit with an Austin personal injury attorney to obtain compensation.

The whole point of a wrongful death lawsuit is to get money for the family left behind, to allow them to continue on financially and emotionally. Compensation requested from the courts by an Austin personal injury attorney may include funds for medical bills, funeral and burial expenses, pain and suffering and other expenses the family have had to take care of as a result of the death of their loved one.

Robert W. Lee is an Austin personal injury lawyer for The Lee Law Firm. If you need an Austin personal injury lawyer, contact an Austin personal injury attorney from The Lee Law Firm. Visit RWLeelaw.com.

It seems the Texas Supreme Court is making a habit out of protecting business interests. This leaves a plaintiff holding the bag.

The blatantly evident lean to protect business interests in Texas by the Supreme Court is quite disturbing, as the decisions are coming at the expense of consumers. How would you like to be on the receiving end of a judgment like that? Chances are you would not and would also wonder what the point would be in taking a business dispute to the court for consideration.

The reluctance to take cases dealing with business issues is becoming more evident in Texas each passing year, and there are no signs of things getting any better given the current makeup of the court. Yes, politics does play a part in the composition of the court and at times, voting alliances based on party lines raises its ugly head. One would hope for impartial hearings, not voting alliances based on personal and political preferences.

Some of the interesting statistics garnered in a close study of the decisions of the Texas Supreme Court indicate some depressing trends. For instance, consumers (plaintiffs) were only able to prevail in roughly 27 percent of the cases when they were trying to battle a government or corporate entity. That’s a very low number of wins for the little guy. What’s more troubling, however, is that in cases where a jury reached a verdict for the plaintiff, the Texas Supreme Court reversed the decision in just about 72 percent of the cases. It makes one wonder what happened to justice for the smaller companies; the entrepreneurs of the world going up against their dog-eat-dog competitors – big business.

One other thing that stands out is the fact that the average rate of agreement with the majority decision tends to run at about 87 percent. While that might sound nice on the surface that the justices agree, it means there isn’t a lot of judicial debate or disagreement. In other words, they all follow one or two leaders and don’t seem to put much thought into offering a differing point of view. This is best referred to as lackluster adjudication and not something you’d want to deal with if it was your case going to court.

Along with the dogged determination to protect big business is another developing trend; that of protecting government entities from being accountable. There is a radically dramatic increase in governmental immunity protections for local and state governments that actually puts citizens at a high risk of harm, both for their lives and their livelihoods.

For example, in a variety of cases ranging from unsafe road conditions to whistleblowers ratting out corporate fraud, the court is letting these government entities hide behind sovereign immunity. What this means is that it lets these defendants off the hook so that they don’t have to take the responsibility for causing individual citizens harm.

Things aren’t all bad on the court, as this year, there have been some encouraging signs from the bench that included some very significant rulings in favor of consumers. Perhaps the tide is turning for the better and even more transparency is just around the corner. We can only hope.

Robert W. Lee is an Austin personal injury lawyer for The Lee Law Firm. If you need an Austin personal injury lawyer, contact an Austin personal injury attorney from The Lee Law Firm. Visit RWLeelaw.com.

Motorcycle accidents are never easy events. The resulting carnage often cuts short lives far too soon.

Whether you realize it or not, motorcycle deaths account for one out of every eight road fatalities. The interesting thing about a recent study done on this phenomenon is that the statistics reveal that African Americans are at a higher risk than Caucasians to be involved in a motorcycle crash. In fact, they show that for every two white bikers who die, three African Americans do not survive their crashes.

Johns Hopkins achieved these statistics by analyzing some 68,840 motorcycle crash accident files between 2002 and 2006 held by the National Trauma Data Bank. The results of their findings were startling in that the numbers clearly showed that African American bikers were more likely to die than their white counterparts, even though more African Americans tend to wear helmets. Statistics like these are often used in court cases by an Austin personal injury lawyer on behalf of an injured victim.

Researchers wanted to check their data and added controls for the numbers based on an accident’s severity, the biker’s gender and insurance status. What showed up was that white bikers who were not wearing helmets were less likely to die than African Americans wearing helmets, hence, the group at the highest risk are African Americans not using protective gear. The bottom line was that the study indicated that African Americans had more lethal injuries and that safety gear doesn’t always make a difference.

What accounts for the differences? The study was a bit vague on that, largely because they have yet to totally complete their analysis of all the figures. Initially, they speculated that the disparity may be because of the difference in levels of health care offered to African Americans before and after an accident. This presumption borders perilously on discrimination in access to quality health care.

Other suggestions were that many African Americans didn’t have health insurance, which meant less access to decent critical care and that many African Americans have a higher rate of pre-existing conditions that make recovery more difficult later.

Whatever the reason may be for you, if you have been involved in a car versus motorcycle crash, it’s best to discuss these issues, and your rights, with an Austin personal injury lawyer. If you need compensation to continue with your life and pay your medical bills, you will need the skilled assistance of an attorney.

Beverly Aylmer writes for The Lee Law Firm. If you need an Austin personal injury lawyer, contact an Austin personal injury attorney from The Lee Law Firm. Visit RWLeelaw.com.

There are so many product recalls these days, some get lost in the shuffle. That doesn’t make them any less serious.

One recent example of a company virtually under siege with multiple product recalls is Johnson & Johnson. They produce a long list of items, from tens of millions of bottles of pediatric OTC medications to contact lenses and hip replacement devices. That’s a lot of things to keep track of and that may be why not many people are paying too much attention to the high risks associated with their Ortho-Evra birth control patch.

The patch is shaping up to be yet another dangerous product. Will it be recalled? That remains to be seen. But right now, it seems to be yet another notch in the rapidly tightening belt for Johnson & Johnson. At least two years ago, Johnson & Johnson shelled out close to $68 million in settlements for hundreds of lawsuits filed by women who suffered strokes, heart attacks or blood clots as a result of using the patch.

At the time, there were a lot of opponents that said the patch needed to be banned. Given its history to date, that might not be a bad idea. If you have had experience with this drug and suffered bad side effects, you may wish to talk to an Austin personal injury attorney.

The disturbing thing about past those cases and some recent ones is that existing court documents showed that Big Pharma Johnson & Johnson knew its product was 12 times as likely to cause strokes and 18 times more likely to cause blood clots than birth control pills. They knew and yet they still marketed it to millions of unsuspecting women.

In the midst of that debacle, a Johnson & Johnson vice president resigned. He noted the connection between the rising number of deaths and the fact that the women who died were using the patch. That wasn’t the end of their legal woes. There was also a lawsuit by a former worker who alleged he suffered retaliation in the workplace when he complained about the patch. These are issues an Austin personal injury attorney may handle, as well.

Fast forward to 2010 and yet another young woman has died as a result of using the patch. The burning question is if the Food and Drug Administration had acted sooner, would the young woman still be alive? Let’s take a look at the Johnson & Johnson labeling in 2006. It does say that high levels of estrogen are dispersed. But does it go further and spell out what that means? That is questionable. It appears that women may continue to die using this product.

What is Johnson & Johnson doing about that? They are continuing to sell their product to the tune of $1.6 billion dollars a year, despite the fact that there is no clear evidence that it works any better than birth control pills. The FDA says this situation is complex and it takes time to assess. What takes time to assess? Women are dying because of the patch.

It seems to be fairly clear. The kicker is women will keep on using the patch, because Johnson & Johnson sells baby products that everyone relies on, which translates into trust for their birth control patch; a trust that is turning out to be deadly. Don’t hesitate to take your concerns about this drug, if you are taking it, to an Austin personal injury attorney who will advise you on your legal rights.

Beverly Aylmer writes for The Lee Law Firm. If you need an Austin personal injury lawyer, contact an Austin personal injury attorney from The Lee Law Firm. Visit RWLeelaw.com.

Most people think drowning means drowning in water. That isn’t always the case.

While most people are fairly familiar with the “usual” kind of drowning – the kind that takes place in a pool or other large body of water – many have not heard about or experienced what is referred to as “dry drowning.” Dry drowning usually happens with children, and all it takes is for a small amount of water to be inhaled during bath time, by the pool or at a beach.

Be on the alert for the signs of dry drowning, which include trouble breathing, tiredness verging on lethargy and behavior changes. This indicates that there is a reduced flow of oxygen to the brain. Take the case of the young boy who had been swimming in a neighbor’s pool and went home with his mom after playtime. Although he had been swimming and seemed to be just fine, he had inhaled a small amount of water into his lungs. He was still able to talk and even walk home with his mom. Once he got home, his mother gave him a bath and put him to bed for a nap. He never woke up.

While he was in the pool, the 10-year-old had an accident; something he would not normally do. And later, after his bath, he was incredibly sleepy. These are two of the signs of dry drowning, but because his mom was not familiar with this, she thought something else was going on.

This is a tough case and one that drove home an incredibly hard life lesson. If you have children and they love swimming, watch them like hawks and make sure they don’t inhale water. Learn to differentiate the various kinds of breathing a kid experiences: allergy nasal wheezing, asthma tight chest breathing, or difficulty breathing because of too much chlorine. Of course, you would also want to recognize the differences in your child being too tired after a long day in the hot sun or of playing for hours on end. Yes, it’s hard to keep track of everything that might go wrong with a little one, but as a parent, you will instinctively know when something isn’t right.

Even though asphyxiation is common in drowning, inhaling large amounts of water into the lungs may or may not occur. About 15 percent of all drowning deaths fall into the category of dry drowning. This is largely due to the victim holding his or her breath or the involuntary reflex spasm of the larynx that shuts off the airway in the throat.

If the victim did inhale water, the amount inhaled doesn’t have to be very much for problems to occur. Medically speaking, the lungs fill with water because body fluids build up; a secondary complication of being deprived of air. Usually, large quantities of water are also swallowed and brought back up spontaneously or when the victim is being given CPR. Vomiting after the larynx shuts down may also cause aspiration of the stomach contents.

It’s a tough call to make: do you go to the ER or not? When in doubt and if you suspect dry drowning, go to the ER. Insist they keep your child under close supervision before going home. Your precautions could well save a life – the life of your child.

Beverly Aylmer writes for The Lee Law Firm. If you need an Austin personal injury lawyer, contact an Austin personal injury attorney from The Lee Law Firm. Visit RWLeelaw.com.