Atlanta Injury Lawyer Blog

As a plaintiff's personal injury attorney in Atlanta, Georgia, handling numerous car wreck cases, probably the saddest case of all is one that involves the death of a child. I have blogged before about the absolute necessity of back-up cameras in SUV's, vans, trucks and really any vehicle that sits high off the ground. Now I see another child in Georgia has been killed by her own parent due to the lack of a back-up camera in the parent's SUV. A back-up camera, which is very inexpensive, would have prevented this tradgedy. Many newer model vehicles now include these cameras as standard equipment. These cameras are inexpensive and easily found for purchase on the internet.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) estimates that in 2009 there were 292 fatalities involving backing over a pedestrian or bicylist. The NHTSA complete report indicates that among cases where the type of the striking vehicle is known, 78 percent of the backover fatalities and 95 percent of the backover injuries involved passenger vehicles. While people of all ages are victims of backovers, this report confirmed that children under 5 years old and adults 70 and older have an elevated risk of being backover victims compared to the rest of the population. Backover fatalities happen in a variety of areas with the most common area being the driveway, closely followed by other residential areas, public roadways, and nonresidential parking lots. Backover injuries tend to happen more frequently in nonresidential parking lots than other areas.

Golf carts are everywhere in Georgia. We see many golf cart accidents in Peachtree City, Georgia, and this one in Gainesville, Georgia sounds like it may have been caused either by faulty manufacture of the golf cart's brakes or faulty maintenance.

GAINESVILLE, Ga. -- One person was seriously injured and three others were taken to the hospital after a golf cart accident occurred at a political fundraiser.

Georgia State Patrol officials said 45-year-old Beverly McDowell was a passenger on a golf cart at a private campaign event for 9th District U.S. rep. Tom Graves in Gainesville when the brakes failed Friday night.

McDowell was airlifted to Atlanta Medical Center where she was listed in critical condition.

Two others were injured and taken to Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville. Their conditions have not been released.

Another passenger, Mark Marlowe, told the Gainesville Times newspaper that he suffered a broken shoulder in the accident.

Officials said the golf cart was shuttling people to the private event at a home in the Harbour Point subdivision when the brakes failed while going down a hill. The driver sideswiped some parked cars in order to stop the golf cart, which overturned and ejected the passengers.

Marlowe told the Gainesville Times that Graves spent most of Friday night at Northeast Georgia Medical Center checking on the injured.

Consumer Reports has just issued its report on the twelve most dangerous supplements and I want to share those with Georgia readers so they know what to avoid. The Today Show on NBC also ran a feature on it this morning. The supplement industry continues to be one of the largest non-regulated industries in the United States, which is a BIG problem. The FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) does NOT regulate the supplement industry and has no jurisdiction or authority to make it do anything.

This includes putting a full and complete ingredient list, including the concentration of each drug, on the label of the bottle, For example, in some tobacco addiction supplements, manufacturers have actually used arsenic, a deadly chemical that has been used to kill unknowing people. You would think that consumers might want to know what they are ingesting into their bodies. Worse, though, is sometimes only the first three letters of an ingredient are listed on the label, making it impossible for the consumer trying to take safety precautions, from knowing exactly what he or she is taking.

The tweleve most dangerous supplements, according to Consumer Reports, are:
Aconite
Bitter Orange
Chaparrel
Colloidal Silver
Coltsfoot
Comfrey
Country Mallow
Germanium
Greater Celandine
Kava
Lobelia

Stay away from these drugs. Exercise extreme caution when taking dietary supplements, herbal remedies, homeopathic drugs, etc.