Who Is Liable In a Scooter Accident? The Process Explained
Electric scooters are a fairly new variable on the roads today, but you need to know who is liable in a scooter accident and how to protect yourself.
4 Causes of Nursing Home Abuse
If your loved one is in a nursing home, it’s good to know the causes of nursing home abuse. While your loved one might not be experiencing abuse right now, knowledge is power, and that power can help should you suspect nursing home abuse in the future. Knowing these signs can help you pick the right nursing home to reduce the risk your loved one faces greatly. Keeping them safe and sound during their elderly years is essential, primarily since they rely on the nursing home staff to help them. There’s nothing worse than being abused by the people who are supposed to care for you. Keep reading to learn about the most common causes of nursing home abuse, what you can do if you suspect abuse, and how you can help your loved ones heal if they’ve become abuse victims. You’re not alone. Let’s work together to keep your loved one safe and well cared for! Causes of Nursing Home Abuse To protect your loved one, it’s essential to understand the causes of nursing home abuse. Understanding what’s going on can help you quickly get to the root of the problem and resolve it. Here are the four most common causes of nursing home abuse. Lack of staff training – Problems can result from a lack of staff training. If a staff member doesn’t know how to do their job, a resident can unfairly suffer from abuse. Nursing homes with inadequate staff training often see problems like not properly administering medications to residents, not changing their sheets or clothes often enough, not checking for bedsores, not knowing CPR, or not treating diseases or infections properly. These issues can result in the spread of disease, severe injury, or death, making lack of training a severe problem. Poor staff pay – Believe it or not, low income will cause some nursing home staff to abuse the residents. Staff members resent their job for not paying them well enough, taking out that resentment on residents. Hostility is another issue resulting from poor staff pay. The staff might take care of residents but make them feel like a burden while fulfilling their needs. Nursing home mismanagement – Unfortunately, the root cause of nursing home abuse can often be traced back to nursing home administrators or owners. Usually, these administrators or owners only care about making money, so they don’t properly train staff or fairly compensate them. The less money they spend, the more they make, regardless of who gets hurt because of it. Understaffing – Understaffing often results in abuse due to the lack of staff members available to care for everyone’s needs. Residents who need care but don’t receive it are being abused. It doesn’t matter whether the staff member can help it. It’s still abuse. But understaffing creates more problems than just neglect. When a nursing home is understaffed, the staff are stretched too thin and overworked, inevitably resulting in burnout and tension, which they could take out on residents. Residents don’t deserve to have someone else’s anger put on them. They don’t staff the nursing home. They’re just elderly people whose families rely on the nursing home staff to take good care of them. How do I know if there’s nursing home abuse? While we hope you never have to deal with nursing home abuse, it is sadly a part of the reality of living in a nursing home. Always keep it on your radar, even if it doesn’t seem to be an issue at the nursing home where your loved one resides. They deserve the best care, and you can help ensure that always happens. The best way to stay on top of an issue like nursing home abuse is by looking for the warning signs. It’s unlikely that a staff member will yell at your loved one while you’re in the room. But take note if your loved one looks nervous when staff is nearby. It’s also important to pay attention to details. Do their bed sheets or clothing look dirty? Have they been taking their daily medications? Are they comfortable, or do they have signs of bedsores? These are all indicators of nursing home abuse. What should I do if I suspect nursing home abuse? Thankfully, you can take action to protect your loved ones and, as a result, the other nursing home residents. Local, state, and national service agencies can help your loved one recover from nursing home abuse, whether physical, emotional, legal, or financial. But getting your loved one the help they need isn’t enough. It’s also important to report the abuse so that other nursing home residents don’t continue to suffer. You can contact the Administration for Community Living’s National Center on Elder Abuse to report and help stop the abuse. It’s impossible to ensure that no abuse ever happens in a nursing home. But it’s in your power to protect your loved ones if it ever happens. Flickinger, Sutterfield & Boulton Can Help Did you know that an attorney can help if your loved one is a victim of nursing home abuse? That’s right; you can get legal help to ensure that your loved one receives the compensation they deserve for their pain and suffering and that their abuser is brought to justice. The causes of nursing home abuse should never happen in the first place, but they unfortunately do. Flickinger, Sutterfield & Boulton understands the sensitive nature of nursing home abuse and the devastating effects it can have. We’re proud to bring over 50 combined years of experience representing personal injury cases to the table. We offer free case evaluations and have locations in Orem, Provo, South Jordan, and West Jordan. Not sure how to get started? Contact us today! We’ll be with you through every step of the process. Let us help you today.
I Had a Bike Accident: What Do I Do?
If you have ever witnessed or been involved in a bike accident, you understand that it can be stressful and traumatic for everyone involved. Even in the best-case scenarios where no one is hurt, the high stress of the situation can feel overwhelming and make it difficult to know how to navigate the logistics. According to the CDC, an average of over 130,000 injuries occur from bike accidents each year. Almost 1,000 of those are fatalities. Both bikers and drivers can take measures to prevent bike accidents, but unfortunately, accidents will still occur. Did you know that legally bicycles and vehicles have the same rights and responsibilities when on the road? So even if you are not a biker, you are just as responsible for the safety of bikers on the road when you are behind the wheel. Tips to Prevent Bike Accidents if You are DRIVING: Drive defensively and obey the speed limit. Slow down for road conditions. Be sure to eliminate distractions while driving. Check your surroundings, especially in parking lots, when you are backing up, or approaching a stop sign. Yield to bikes just as you would yield to another vehicle. Give bicyclists room when you pass. When turning right on a red light, be sure to check your mirrors and look over your right shoulder for bicyclists on the edge of the road or the sidewalk. Tips to Prevent Bike Accidents if You are BIKING: Wear a helmet. Wear attire that helps you be seen like florescent colors or reflective gear. This is even more important at night. Make sure your bike has the correct light reflectors–white for the front and red for the rear. Carry all items in a backpack or securely strapped to the back of the bike so both hands are available to steer and brake. Go with the flow of traffic and obey all street signs and stop lights. Hopefully, you will never have to use this information, but here are five things that you should be sure to do in the event of a bike accident. 1. Call the police If someone is injured, call 911 right away. Communicate your location and the details of the injuries as clearly and specifically as you can. When telling the dispatcher your location, it can be helpful to give more details than just the address. For example, you can say that you are in the northeast corner of the intersection or on the south side of the road in front of the gas station. Stay on the line until help arrives or the dispatcher tells you that you can hang up the phone. If all parties are uninjured, you still should call the police. You can call 911 or use the local non-emergency number. It’s still important to have a police officer respond to the accident in order to file a police report and ensure everyone involved is all right. Police reports are important records of the events and effects of the accident. They are often required for insurance claims or legal processes. In most cases, it is much more difficult to file a report after the fact, so it is better to have one and not need it than to need one and not have it. 2. Document Everything Similar to a police report, documentation can be very helpful in resolving issues that arise from accidents. Take pictures of any injuries and damages that have occurred from multiple angles and from close up and far away. Photos provide evidence and a timestamp of when the accident and damages occurred. This is helpful in case you end up going to court or need proof for insurance companies. You will be required to fill out a summary of what happened as part of the police report, so again, be as detailed as possible. You can request a copy of the police report once the officer has processed it. 3. Get Information from all Parties Everyone who was involved in the accident should exchange information. This includes names, phone numbers, and insurance information; and possibly addresses, emails, or other personal information. This information will also be included in the police report, but you may need access to it before you receive a copy of the report. So it is always a good idea to write down the information or take pictures of identifications and insurance cards as soon as possible after the accident. 4. Seek Medical Care The first concern after an accident should be everyone’s well-being. Paramedics and EMTs can treat you at the scene of the accident and on the way to the hospital. But even if you do not feel you are in need of emergency care, you should still visit a doctor to make sure everything is okay. Urgent care facilities can also be useful to visit in non-emergency situations or if you are not able to get in to see your primary care doctor. Some injuries may not be apparent right after the accident, but a medical professional can rule out any injuries or complications and provide important documentation. Be sure to tell the medical provider you were in a bike accident and follow all care instructions and medical advice that are given. 5. Get Legal Help The cost of personal injuries that occur as a result of accidents can be extremely high and continue for years if the consequences are severe, not to mention the cost of damages to your bike or vehicle. If you feel that you or a loved one were injured in an accident due to another person’s negligence, you may require legal help to get the compensation you deserve. Get in contact with an attorney to review your case and determine if you have a case that could benefit from legal representation. Flickinger Sutterfield & Boulton The team of expert attorneys at Flickinger Sutterfield & Boulton specialize in personal injury law and will review your case for free. They recognize that every bike accident case
Identifying and Avoiding Road Rage and Aggressive Driving
As Utah’s population grows, we must commit to avoiding road rage and aggressive driving from others and keeping our cool if we experience it. More drivers on the road mean slower commutes and more potential for aggression. Without greater intention to avoid emotional responses, this leaves us all at greater risk of an accident. “Road rage” is a term that was coined in the 1990s by a television news station in response to several incidents of freeway shootings. Many have expanded the term to encompass all forms of aggressive driving. However, while both aggressive driving and road rage are dangerous, there are differences between the two. Utah motorists should be aware of what aggressive driving and road rage are, the extent of the problem of these behaviors, and how to avoid aggressive drivers and prevent auto accidents. What is the Difference Between Road Rage and Aggressive Driving? The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s definition of aggressive driving is “the operation of a motor vehicle in a manner that endangers or is likely to endanger persons or property.” While this behavior is dangerous, it’s not intentionally putting others at risk. Some examples of aggressive driving include speeding, sudden and unsignaled lane changes, following other vehicles too closely, driving too fast for the road conditions, ignoring traffic control signals, frequently honking car horns, flashing headlights, and improperly passing other vehicles. Road rage is a criminal offense, unlike aggressive driving, which is a traffic offense. According to the NHTSA, road rage is when a driver commits “moving traffic offenses to endanger other persons or property; an assault with a motor vehicle or other dangerous weapon by the operator or passenger of one motor vehicle on the operator or passengers of another motor vehicle.” The difference between road rage and aggressive driving is that a driver committing an act of road rage specifically intends to harm another, while an aggressive driver is putting others on the road at risk of harm but not targeting another driver specifically. How Big of a Problem are Road Rage and Aggressive Driving? Aggressive driving and road rage are serious problems. According to NHTSA and Auto Vantage auto club data, 66% of traffic fatalities are attributable to aggressive driving. This data also shows that 37% of all road rage incidents involve firearms. Utah has seen a trend of increased aggressive driving behaviors in 2021 and 2022. This includes behaviors like excessive speed, wrong-way driving, and brandishing weapons. The Utah Highway Patrol says this helps explain record numbers of highway fatalities in Utah and the nation overall. They suspect one reason for this is that during the pandemic, highway traffic decreased, making commutes much faster. As traffic levels have returned to normal and brought back congestion, it has created a situation of impatience and risky maneuvers. How Can People Avoid Aggressive Drivers? People can take some steps to help protect themselves from aggressive drivers and prevent road rage incidents, including: Maintain 360-degree awareness of vehicles around you Remember good defensive driving rules Lock vehicle doors while you drive Keep a reasonable following distance from the car ahead of you People who cannot control their anger while driving put everyone on the road in danger, and their behavior causes auto accidents. Your best bet is to keep your distance from these drivers So their terrible day doesn’t ruin yours. Governing our Emotional Responses When we Drive Aggressive driving often begets aggression in response, leading to further danger of auto accidents. Half of the drivers surveyed replied that when they are victims of aggressive driving, they respond with their own aggressive actions. While you may be a perfectly polite and calm driver most of the time, it’s only human to feel anger when someone else puts us in danger by careless and aggressive actions. We can’t control what other drivers will do, but we can control how we respond. And this may be the difference between a collision and a close call. Avoiding road rage and aggressive driving is all our responsibility. If you respond to aggression with aggression and an accident results from your actions, you’ll likely be held at least partially liable for damages and subject to legal action. This may result in a charge of reckless driving – a class B misdemeanor in Utah. You could face up to six months in jail, $1,000 in fines, and/or a three-month driving suspension. When someone cuts you off, you’ll never even the score by driving aggressively in response. You’ll only be putting your own safety at risk. If you do encounter aggressive drivers, here are a few responses to aggression that will be more productive: Avoid reacting to aggressive behaviors in manners that could be seen as threatening, such as braking suddenly, honking the horn, or using obscene gestures Increase the distance between you and the other driver Take down their license plate number (if you can safely) and report the dangerous activity If an aggressive driver follows you, drive to a police station for help Use breathing exercises to reduce aggressive feelings Continue driving defensively Injured in a Car accident? Flickinger Sutterfield & Boulton Can Help Of course, avoiding road rage and aggressive driving is ideal, but these things can’t always be avoided. If you have been in an auto accident involving aggressive driving or road rage, the anxiety, fear, and frustration can be overwhelming even months and years after the accident. You don’t have to go through this alone. Having competent legal counsel during this time can help you recover financially, allowing you to focus on physical and emotional healing. Flickinger Sutterfield & Boulton has the experience to help you get the best possible outcome. We know Utah’s legal landscape; we are familiar with the system’s intricacies that will influence your case’s outcome. Contact us as soon as possible after your accident so we can help you get things moving in your favor. Even if you think the facts are clear-cut, you may need to fight for what