Murrieta Personal Injury Law Blog

In a study that examined child fatalities caused by motor vehicle accidents throughout the country from 2010 to 2014, California, with 200 deaths, ranked second highest among all the states. Children were defined as being younger than 15 in the research.

A total of 2,885 children died in car accidents from 2010 to 2014. Most of them occurred on rural roads in the South, which ranked as the deadliest region in the U.S. with 1,550 child fatalities. The Midwest followed with 585 deaths, then the West with 561 and, lastly, the Northeast with 189. The study revealed that one out of five children is improperly restrained, and 13 percent of them sit in the front seat before reaching the age when it would be safe to do so. Researchers calculated that increasing the proper use of restraints by 10 percent would prevent more than 230 children from dying each year, a figure that represents almost 40 percent of the child fatalities from 2010-2014.

Testing performed by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety suggests that the mandatory installation of side-mounted underride bars on semi-tractor trailers in California and around the country could save lives. Legislators are currently reviewing regulations that would mandate the fitting of underride bars to the rear of large commercial trucks, but the IIHS tests indicate that these safety features protect passenger vehicle occupants just as well when they are installed on the sides of trailers.

To gauge the effectiveness of side-mounted underride bars, the nonprofit organization conducted two crash tests involving family sedans traveling at 35 mph and two standard 53-foot van trailers. The trailers were fitted with either a side-mounted underride bar or an aerodynamic glass fiber skirt. Truck operators use such skirts to improve stability and reduce fuel consumption, but they do little to protect vehicle passengers in a crash.

California residents may be interested to learn that Home Depot, the popular home improvement store, will face a lawsuit that claimed that the company's negligence led to the murder of an employee by a supervisor. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, in remanding the case back to the trial court, held that the company knew that the supervisor had a history of harassing lower-level female employees but still allowed him to have supervision over the female employee, who was pregnant when she was murdered.

The female employee was murdered by the male supervisor in 2012 during an offsite event. The supervisor was eventually sentenced to two life terms in prison in 2014. Home Depot argued that the company could not be held responsible as the crime was not committed on store property. However, the appellate court held that, by allowing the man to be a supervisor even knowing his history, the company did give him power over the employee. He reportedly used this power to force her to go to the offsite event.

California motorists might have been in more danger of involvement in a fatal large truck accident in 2015 than in the previous year. In 2015, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, there was an 8 percent increase in the number of large trucks involved in deadly crashes compared to the previous year. The FMCSA defined large trucks as weighing more than 10,000 pounds.

There were 3,598 deadly crashes in 2015 involving 4,050 large trucks. A total of 415,000 crashes involving large trucks were reported to police, and 20 percent of those crashes resulted in injuries.