Florida Highway Patrol will be targeting aggressive drivers in advance of the upcoming Fourth of July holiday weekend. FHP will enforce the “Ticketing Aggressive Cars and Trucks (TACT)” program until June 28.
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Specifically, troopers will be looking to educate motorists about the dangers of aggressive driving around large trucks.
The U.S. Occupations Safety and Health Administration in investigating how a roofer fell from atop a Fort Myers truck dealership earlier this week.
The News-Press reports the accident on Palm Avenue, where Fort Myers police, firefighters and Lee County EMS personnel responded, left the victim seriously injured. The 911 caller reported a man had fallen from the roof and was not moving.
OSHA reports fall accidents are second only to transportation accidents among U.S. workers. Construction workers, and roofers in particular, are among those at greatest risk.
Florida Highway Patrol is reminding motorists it’s that time of year again when driving in inclement weather becomes a life skill.
Slick roads, blinding rain, high winds, and standing water are among the primary threats. The FHP urges motorists to “turn around, don’t drown,” when encountering standing water in the roadway. 
Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles notes Florida is known for extreme weather, and rapidly changing weather conditions, both of which can catch even veteran motorists off guard.
National, state and local leaders announced this week that South Florida drivers face the highest risk in the country when it comes to being injured by faulty or damaged airbags.
Heidi King, deputy administrator for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, joined automakers and South Florida community leaders on June 7 to urge Floridians to check their vehicle identification numbers to see whether their vehicles are under recall for defective Takata air bags.
The NHTSA estimates at least 23 deaths and more than 300 injuries have been linked to exploding Takata air bags.
Naples Daily News and the Fort Myers News-Press reported recently on the poor patient care record of the state’s largest chain of nursing homes.
Reporters cited more than a dozen lawsuits against Consulate Health Care, which is the state’s largest network of nursing homes and the sixth largest in the nation. The company denies allegations in the lawsuits. A recent whistleblower lawsuit resulted in a $347 million verdict against the company, after jury found Consulate bilked government programs by misrepresenting care provided and overcharging for medically unnecessary treatments. 
Our nursing home neglect attorneys know nursing homes are big businesses looking to make big profits, despite being reliant upon government funding, such as Medicare, for a significant portion of revenue. The industry continues to consolidate, with more and more homes owned by fewer and fewer large, profit-driven corporations.
A Florida appellate court recently affirmed summary judgment favoring warehouse giant Costco in a slip-and-fall lawsuit filed by a woman who broke her knee after falling inside a Miami store.
The primary reason the case failed was because, the court held, plaintiff had not produced evidence indicating that store staffers had knowledge of the liquid substance on its entrance way floor.
The element of a store owner’s knowledge regarding a slippery substance on the floor is outlined specifically in F.S. 768.0755. This provision requires plaintiffs in Florida slip-and-fall cases to prove either actual or constructive knowledge on the part of the defendant. Actual knowledge would be if a store staffer created the condition or if they had been informed about it directly. Constructive knowledge is a little trickier, but can be established with circumstantial evidence that shows the condition listed long enough the store should have discovered it in using ordinary care or that the condition occurred with regularity and was therefore foreseeable.
In this case, according to Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals, plaintiff accompanied a neighbor to Costco, a store to which she had never been. When they got there, plaintiff’s neighbor went to get a shopping cart and plaintiff began walking toward the entrance. As she walked, she felt her right leg go out from underneath her, and she fell onto her left knee – breaking it. Continue reading →
The lives of three Florida teens were ended or dramatically altered by drivers who were born during WWI. 
The Miami Herald reports on two separate crashes – one in Fort Pierce and another in Davie – with drivers who were 99 and 100, respectively. In the Davie case, the 100-year-old motorist reportedly struck a 16-year-old student pedestrian as she walked to her bus stop. The teen has needed to undergo two emergency brain surgeries – so far. In the second crash, the 99-year-old driver killed two teens – 17 and 18 – when driving his recreational vehicle on the wrong side of State Road 70 (traveling west in the eastbound lanes) with no working headlights. The 99-year-old later died of injuries sustained in that crash.
It was later revealed that while both motorists had clean driving records. The 99-year-old driver had recently undergone a vision, paper and road test – all of which he passed – after someone reported to the Michigan Secretary of State’s office that medical issues made him a potentially unsafe driver. Continue reading →
When motorcycles and other vehicles collide, it’s usually because the other driver violated the motorcyclist’s right-of-way. It’s a fact well-established by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and backed by other research.
We saw this scenario play out again recently right here in Fort Myers, with the tragic death of a 22-year-old motorcyclist who was struck while riding on McGregor Boulevard.
According to WINK News, the motorcyclist was driving northbound on McGregor, approaching Water Lane, when a 34-year-old driver traveling the opposite direction on McGregor tried to turn left onto Water Lane. As she did so, she violated the motorcyclist’s right-of-way, the investigation Florida Highway Patrol reported. The result was the car struck the motorcycle, and the young biker died days later. A teen passenger in the car also suffered minor injuries.
Uber is back in the news — this time after more than 100 drivers are accused of sexually assaulting and abusing customers.
Earlier this year on our Florida Injury Lawyer blog we examined the increasing number of personal injury cases resulting from traffic collisions involving ride-sharing services.
Now, a CNN investigation has found 103 Uber drivers in the United States have been accused of sexually assaulting or abusing passengers, many of whom were intoxicated and had used the service for a safe ride home. More than 30 drivers have been criminally convicted and dozens of criminal and civil cases are pending.
The death of two construction workers in Naples last week is a stark reminder of the risks and consequences of Southwest Florida’s building boom.
The men were installing a temporary elevator shaft on a Gulf Shore Boulevard high-rise when the scaffolding crumbled beneath them. Naples police report the men fell more than 100 feet. State and federal authorities will investigate.
Construction is among the most dangerous occupations nationwide. The number of deaths has continued to climb as the economy has recovered and Lee and Collier counties have returned to boom times. The Bureau of Labor Statistics report 309 Florida workers died in job-related accidents in 2016, up from 272 in the previous year.
