Personal Injury Primer

I’m David Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana.

Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law in simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss topics on personal injury law.

Have you looked at the dashboard screens on the newest cars being offered for sale?

Many new car makers have incorporated lengthy computer screens that replace the speedometer layout of older cars and extend into what has been a traditionally separate navigation and infotainment screen. Some screens are curved and spread 25 to 30 inches from the dash’s far left to the car’s middle.

Car makers can save money by presenting images showing a digital speedometer and digital tachometer instead of installing mechanical components that provide the same vehicle information.

But, is the motoring public’s safety compromised by presenting drivers with complex systems that might distract a driver?

When you position yourself behind the wheel of an unfamiliar car, the learning curve is high when it comes to figuring out how to work the navigation system, configure Bluetooth connections, and figure out how to access USB devices you might plug in.

Some car makers smartly prevent the car from moving when it senses the driver might be attending to something other than the road. But, when a driver is at highway speed, the vehicle cannot stop moving if it senses the driver touching a screen.

Some car makers are bundling radio and climate controls into a digital touchscreen layout. You need to navigate a touch screen to raise or lower the temperature, and you are back to scrolling a touch screen to change the fan speed.

Again, you are navigating a touch screen to select a radio station or choose to play music stored on a plugin USB.

Are these digital touchscreen layouts more distracting and dangerous than old-fashioned physical buttons and dials?

The jury is out, but the physical buttons are far less distracting to many people.

I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”

I’m David Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana.

Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics.

Today’s question comes from a caller concerned about his mom, a resident of an assisted living facility.

He recently read an article from the Denver Post about an incident where a 97-year-old woman froze to death outside an assisted living facility, prompting an investigation and a lawsuit. He understands that the care at his mom’s facility is less than she would receive with nursing home care, but the story prompted many questions.

Assisted living facilities vary in the care provided, and some levels of care are patient-dependent.

But is it reasonable to expect some minimal level of care?

The woman described in the Denver Post was stranded outside in 15-degree weather and snow for five hours in February.

She stepped out of the building in the middle of the night wearing a nightgown, robe, boots, and gloves.

Unfortunately, the door locked shut behind her.

She had the presence of mind to use her walker to navigate the sidewalk until she ran into a 5-foot snowbank. She ditched the walker, climbed over the snow, and crawled 75 feet to a windowed door adjacent to a nurses’ station.

But the nurses reportedly sitting at the desks did not hear her banging on the window.

Such facts smack of negligence, at the very least. But remember, negligence is another name for lack of reasonable care.

In the woman’s case, a state investigation found no violation of facility safety regulations.

Let’s step away from the case of the woman who died, however.

Must an assisted living facility anticipate every dangerous circumstance that potentially could confront a resident?

Fire safety laws would prevent locking the doors from the inside. But alarms could have been placed on the doors. An alarm would have reported an opening of a door. Most movie theaters have such an alarm.

Would reasonable care require a doorbell outside a door set to lock once opened and used to exit?

Such a bell would allow someone outside to signal their presence.

Does the standard of care vary according to what a facility knows about a patient?

What if a facility knows a patient suffers from confusion and needs to be monitored at night for sleepwalking? Should such a patient be tagged as at risk for wandering?

Must a facility have security cameras showing if a patient steps outside?

If so, must the cameras be monitored constantly?

Does the assisted living facility engage in routine periodic room checks? Such checks would disclose a missing patient.

What if facility history shows other patients wandering about at night and exposed to dangers of varied sorts?

A past history of wandering would require more care in most circumstances.

In discussing this issue with the caller, he took our advice to ask important questions like these to the people running the place where his mom lived.

You might consider doing the same if you have a relative at such a facility.

I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – While there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”

I’m David Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana.

Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics.

Today’s question came from a caller whose driver’s assist package malfunctioned and caused his car to slam on its brakes. Luckily there was no collision, but he wanted to know his legal options. He was told it might be months before the part is available to fix the issue. Thankfully, the dealer helped him disable the feature for now.

Maybe you’ve noticed that there have been quite a few articles on our blog about Tesla over the years. But the caller’s car was not a Tesla; instead, his car was made by a well-known German automaker whose name starts with the letter B.

We’ve shared our thoughts on Tesla’s autopilot (they call it driver assist). We have addressed their infotainment features, such as watching movies and playing video games while driving. In all those articles, you would think that we are anti-Tesla. We are neither anti-Tesla nor anti-technology.

What we are is anti-negligence.

Unfortunately, driver assistance systems that malfunction pose a danger on the highway. So do assist packages that lull the driver into inattentiveness to the road.

When a manufacturer creates a product that enables a consumer to no longer control their environment, it can potentially lead to another person being injured or, worse, killed.

Allowing that product to be fitted into a vehicle that can travel on highways at high speeds creates an opportunity for negligence to occur fast and with great destructive force.

One of the most important things to understand about personal injury law in the context of auto accidents is the principle of negligence.

To recover damages for an injury sustained in a car accident, you must be able to prove that the other driver was negligent in some way.

This means they failed to exercise the level of care and caution a reasonable person would have under the same circumstances.

The most common form of negligence in car accidents is distracted driving.

Distracted driving is any activity that diverts a driver’s attention away from the road, such as texting, eating, or playing with the infotainment display.

A distracted driver can be held liable for any injuries or damages that result.

What happens if a driver assist feature on a car, call it autopilot or something else, results in a driver taking their eyes off the road?

Or causes them to decide to take a nap while behind the wheel?

Recently a driver of a Tesla engaged the driver assistant and quickly fell asleep.

A police officer noticed the driver slumped over, pulled his cruiser next to the Tesla (while on a highway doing 82 mph), and tried to get the driver to wake up.

Fortunately, the driver did wake up and was able to safely stop. Nobody was injured, thank goodness. The driver was cited for “inattentive driving.”

The officer could not cite Tesla for contributing to cause “inattentive driving,” but Tesla’s safety system, albeit misused, actually did lead the driver to be inattentive.

Imagine if that scenario played out differently. At 82 miles per hour, the driver of the Tesla could have caused much death, and destruction had he collided with other cars.

Sadly, a California man died when his Tesla impacted the rear of a stopped tractor-trailer. The man had shared videos on his social media of him engaging the driver assistant shortly before the crash.

What is the solution when a company demonstrates that it values technology-assisted features over the laws that are supposed to keep consumers safe?

Many states are now pursuing legislation that would hold autonomous vehicle (AV) manufacturers accountable for manufacturing vehicles that directly result in a violation of traffic rules.

I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – While there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”

I’m David Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana.

Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics.

Today’s question comes from a caller who said she was driving on the interstate after dark and a semi-tractor trailer truck pulled alongside her.

She said that without warning the truck drifted into her lane and struck her SUV causing it to roll into the ditch.

She speculates that driver must have fallen asleep.

However, the truck driver told the police another vehicle that failed to stop cut him off and he had no choice but to swerve and that the crash was not his fault.

You might be asking yourself; does it really matter whether the trucker fell asleep or had to swerve? Yes, it does.

By claiming that another unknown vehicle caused him to swerve, the trucker and his insurance carrier will argue that he was not at fault. He says he was as much an innocent victim as the caller.

But not so fast.

If it can be established that due to fatigue the driver fell asleep at the wheel, not only does it make him clearly responsible for the crash, it establishes that he is a liar. It means the truck driver made up his claim that some unknown car caused the crash.

Proving that the semi-driver fell asleep implicates him, and the motor carrier that put him on the road, in violating safety rules regarding maximum operating hours, if in fact, the evidence helps establish that the driver and motor carrier violated maximum operating hours regulations.

But how do you go about establishing that the driver was fatigued?

In most serious crashes involving a commercial motor vehicle, there is usually a DOT inspection of the vehicle.

An inspection will include a review of the driver’s operating logs. If there was no DOT inspection, an attorney will have to request that all driver logs be preserved. There must be a preservation request because the law permits driver logs to be destroyed after a few months.

The regulations require that a driver is not permitted to be on duty for a period greater than stated in the rules. When a driver exceeds the hours of allowable driving or on-duty time, they can be cited for a violation of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.

Drivers are required to keep written logs. Many drivers keep handwritten logs. Some motor carriers require electronic logs.

The handwritten logs are supposed to indicate where a driver was located when they stopped to enter information into the log. Electronic logs can also be tagged to GPS locations.

These logs can help establish whether a driver was driving longer than the rules permit.

This may require hiring an expert to review all of the information.

However, if the driver was exceeding the number of hours permitted, it makes it more likely that the driver was fatigued.

In addition to having a commercial driving expert, it may be necessary to look at the medical history of a particular driver.

We had one matter where a driver suffered from sleep apnea, which made him fatigued.

Another driver had recently been diagnosed with narcolepsy which caused him to fall asleep at the wheel.

Driving log requirements under the safety regulations help keep fatigued drivers off the road.

What is worse than a fatigued driver? A driver who is fatigued and lies about an unknown driver causing a crash to cover up his own fault.

I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”

I’m David Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana.

Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics.

Ordering auto parts online has become so easy that even a non-mechanic can do it. It didn’t use to be this way. In years past, you would need to take the broken part to an auto parts store and find a match that worked for your car. Unfortunately, the pandemic put a squeeze on the availability of some parts. This meant finding what you needed in-store or online was more difficult. Then the opportunists stepped in and said, “Hey, we have a solution. We can print 3D parts for you.”

Sure, 3D-printed parts filled the void created by manufacturers failing to process orders for consumers. But who is liable when component parts fail after they are installed in vehicles? Those individuals printing parts are akin to modern-day snake oil salesmen. They will argue that their 3D printed part is just as good, safe, or equivalent to the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) part. It’s at a fraction of the price. If you want a 3D printed shot glass or pencil holder, buy one…but when offered 3D printed auto parts…run away. Your safety is not worth risking.

Those 3D-printed parts are not tested for quality, and no research and development to support the merchantability of those printed parts has taken place. A design code is downloaded from the internet and fed into a computer. The code instructs the printer how to shape the item. And most likely, no application test results are given to show how the part works under load pressure. When the item is installed in place of an actual auto part, it will experience heat/cold, grease, chemical fluids, and motion. All of which can lead to catastrophic failure.

Let’s delve into the types of legal liability that exist for 3D Printed Parts:

So can you sue over 3D Printed car parts?

As is always the case, it depends. These cases are growing as the popularity and convenience of 3D printing become mainstream. Unfortunately, they are not always open/shut cases. And proving the design was defective when it left the care of the creator or retailer can be a challenge. Also, it may be a challenge to prove the producer of a 3D printed part was in the business of selling such parts when they could just be a tinkerer or hobbyist.

Lastly, think about the collectability of the seller of a 3D-printed part. Are they insured? Are they as financially stable as Ford, GM, or Mercedes?

I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, a product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”

I’m David Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana.

Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics.

We just completed a series of five podcasts discussing commercial vehicle regulations.

In particular, we discussed the FMCSR rules and how they apply to commercial truck drivers and motor carriers.

If you listened to all five podcasts, you are now an expert on the operational requirements of commercial motor vehicles. Maybe not an expert, but someone with more knowledge than usual.

Suppose you share a highway with a farm semi-tractor trailer loaded with grain or livestock. Must the farmer comply with the many regulations involving other commercial vehicles?

The answer is, for the most part, yes. But, also, no.

The agricultural use operators must comply with requirements to check for brake operation, check the tires, and ensure the vehicle is in good operational order.

However, many states either exempt agricultural transportation vehicles from the more demanding regulations or offer a waiver for farm vehicles.

For example, a restricted CDL may be offered in some states. This exempts drivers from meeting specific training requirements (such as hazmat training).

To qualify for an exemption or waiver, the agricultural use vehicle must:

On the other hand, basic regulations, such as setting out flares and warning signs if the vehicle stalls on the roadway, do apply to agricultural use vehicles.

However, one of the most critical differences in farm semi-tractor-trailers treatment under the law is the insurance coverage required for such vehicles.

Commercial motor vehicles operated by motor carriers must have $1 million coverage. Farm tractor-trailer operations do not.

The lack of coverage can be important if you collide with the farm semi-tractor trailer.

Most states justify the lower insurance coverage limits by stating that the farm vehicle is not on the road often and is a seasonal operation. Thus, the farmers do not have to pay the high premiums of $1 million in insurance coverage.

If you’re going to get involved in a collision with a semi-tractor-trailer, be sure you collide with one with the required $1 million of coverage.

I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”

I’m Katelyn Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana.

Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics.

As noted in our last four podcasts, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations set out the rules for commercial vehicle operation.

This fifth and last podcast on this topic focuses on commercial truck driving schools.

Commercial truck driving schools are far different from high school driver training courses.

At truck driving school, drivers will learn and be tested about:

As you can see, a good training school will cover all the main topics required to be a safe commercial vehicle operator.

When conducting a jury trial involving the negligent operation of commercial vehicles, the attorney must be nearly as knowledgeable as a CDL holder.

In a rear end collision case, the jury will need to know for example, that due to how truck braking systems function and how stopping distance is vastly longer for heavy vehicles, a truck driver will be negligent if they were following only 5 – 7 car lengths behind the victim’s car, when they should have been following 5 – 7 truck lengths behind.

Likewise, while a 4-wheel drive car might be able to operate safety at 45 mph on packed snow, a truck operating under such extreme driving conditions would be negligent if it did not slow to 25 mph.

Similarly, a jury will need to learn that skid control and recovery for a driver operating a 4-wheel vehicle is vastly different for someone driving an 18-wheeler.

I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, a product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”

I’m David Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana.

Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics.

As noted in our last three podcasts, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations set out the rules for commercial vehicle operation.

In parts 1-3, we defined a motor carrier and a motor carrier employee. We also described that the regulations require extreme caution when a CMV driver encounters hazardous conditions, such as snow, ice, sleet, fog, mist, rain, dust, or smoke, that diminish visibility or traction.

In part 4, we discuss the requirement of commercial drivers to scan the roadway ahead to keep a lookout for other vehicles that may present a danger to the safe operation of a truck.

The requirement to keep a lookout ahead differs from the average car driver’s expectations.

As every driver understands, there is a duty to look ahead for traffic. The typical jury instruction on the law applicable to keeping a lookout reads: Every driver must maintain a proper lookout to see or hear what should be seen or heard through the exercise of reasonable care.

Heavy commercial vehicles have an extended stopping distance, and because most drivers sit higher and can see above non-commercial vehicles ahead, the requirement to keep a lookout is more demanding.

Training materials for CDL drivers routinely state that a good commercial driver will look at least 12 to 15 seconds ahead. At low speeds, 12 to 15 seconds is about the length of a city block. At highway speeds, 12 to 15 seconds extends ahead of the truck about one-quarter of a mile. Commercial drivers are trained to shift their attention between closer and distant objects.

Why must commercial vehicles keep such an enhanced lookout? So, they can change lanes and adjust speeds as needed to avoid traffic and adjust to curves and visibility challenges.

While reaction distance may be the same for commercial and non-commercial drivers, the braking distance is far longer for large, heavy vehicles. A heavy vehicle’s braking distance at 55 mph may be as high as 400 feet, and for a typical car, the braking distance may be 80 feet.

Truckers also need to manage the space around them to adjust when things go wrong.

While braking distance is extended for heavy vehicles, vehicle weight also adversely impacts acceleration.

Slow acceleration and truck length limit a heavy vehicle’s ability to maneuver in and out of traffic like a car.

The fifth podcast in this series will discuss commercial truck driving schools.

I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, a product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”

I’m Katelyn Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana.

Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics.

As noted in our last two podcasts, we often are faced with the need to educate people serving on a jury about the safety rules governing commercial motor vehicles.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations set out the rules for commercial vehicle operation.

Our first podcast noted that the regulations apply to all motor carriers. Which is any person who owns or leases a commercial motor vehicle.

In part 2, we defined a motor carrier employee as any individual who directly affects commercial motor vehicle safety, including independent contractors hired to drive and mechanics working on the vehicles.

In this third podcast, we focus on the requirement of commercial drivers to exercise extreme caution when the roadway presents hazardous conditions.

This is a big deal. Unlike drivers of cars and other private vehicles, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations at part 392.14 calls for extreme caution when a commercial motor vehicle driver encounters hazardous conditions, such as snow, ice, sleet, fog, mist, rain, dust, or smoke, that adversely affect visibility or traction.

Extreme caution may mean that speed must be drastically reduced when hazardous conditions exist, or extreme caution may mean that commercial vehicle operation is discontinued and not resumed until the commercial motor vehicle can be safely operated.

In practice, if the roads are wet and slippery for cars, drivers will slow down a little. In most cases, car drivers will not slow down nearly enough, but they at least slow down.

Heavy commercial vehicles cannot deal with slippery conditions as well as lightweight cars. The stopping distance may be doubled for heavy trucks when the roads are wet. Slowing from 55 mph to 35 mph may be necessary for trucks, and speed may need to be reduced even further on packed snow to meet the extreme caution requirement.

In our next podcast, part 4, we will focus on the requirement of commercial drivers to scan the roadway ahead to keep a lookout for other vehicles on the highway.

The requirement to keep a lookout ahead differs from the average car driver’s expectations.

I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, a product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”

I’m David Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana.

Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics.

As noted in our last podcast we often are faced with having to educate people serving on a jury about the safety rules governing commercial motor vehicles.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations set out the rules that deal with commercial vehicle operation.

In our last podcast we noted that the regulations apply to all motor carriers. Which is any person who owns or leases a commercial motor vehicle.

A motor carrier employee is any individual employed who in the course of his employment directly affects commercial motor vehicle safety. This definition is broad and covers independent contractors hired to drive, as well as mechanics working on the vehicles.

A commercial motor vehicle includes a tractor trailer, a straight truck weighing over 10,001 pounds, and some other vehicles weighing over 10,001 pounds.

Some of the more demanding rules deal with only heavy trucks weighing 26,001 pounds.

For the heaviest of trucks, a CDL is always required, log books are generally required, and drug and alcohol testing is required.

Let’s take a closer look at the requirement to maintain a driver’s qualification file.

A motor carrier has to keep a file showing a driver’s qualification and, in that file, must be materials including:

As you can see, if a jury is made up of drivers who only operate cars and non-commercial trucks and pickups, trial will necessarily require witness testimony to educate them as to the safety rules governing commercial vehicles.

Our next podcast will delve into the requirement of commercial drivers to exercise extreme caution when the roadway presents hazardous conditions.

I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com.