Chicago Personal Injury Lawyers Blog

I am interested in technology and science. I believe an understanding of science is crucial to being a successful personal injury lawyer. Whether to better understand the science of medicine or the physics and engineering principles of a complex machine, science is crucial to our practice of law.

I came across an interesting topic titled Quiet Hybrid Cars Pose Risk To Pedestrians that was aired on Science Today. Hybrid cars on city streets are very quiet. If you live in the Chicago, I am sure that you will appreciate anything that would make life easier on the ears; however noise plays an important role in protecting and warning pedestrians that are walking across streets in the city. This is especially true for pedestrians with disabilities. Blind pedestrians rely upon hearing for almost every aspect of their daily lives. Luckily visually disabled persons have resources available to assist them in living independently. Organizations such as The Chicago Lighthouse are there to help.

This Science Today airing reminded me of a case we had in Cook County when our client, a blind pedestrian, was struck by a City of Chicago, Streets and Sanitation, garbage truck.

In that case, our client was legally blind and had been trained by the good folks at The Chicago Lighthouse so that he could live independently, like he was doing on the day when he was returning home from the store. Unfortunately, even the loud noise of a garbage truck, could not prevent our client from being hit and dragged 30 feet from the crosswalk on North Avenue in Chicago. Our client suffered serious injuries including, bilateral femur fractures, a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and serious degloving injuries.

With new hybrid cars populating the roads, it is more important than ever for Illinois drivers to follow the rules of the road in yielding the right of way to pedestrians with disabilities, as outlined in the Illinois Rules Of The Road.

I, like most, would love to live with a minimal environmental footprint. However, with the new technology that will necessarily develop, it is important that pedestrians, those that are not using any fossil fuels by walking, and especially disabled pedestrians are not placed at an increased risk of injury.

Source: Science Today

Source: The Chicago Lighthouse

Source: Cyber Drive Illinois

In this blog, I will periodically post links to recent literature that I find important in my practice. This is one of those blogs and the article that caught my eye is called Committing Single Events To Memory, from Science Today at the University of California.

When I first started handling traumatic brain injury cases (TBI) I was amazed at how much of the brain we do not understand. I find that due to this lack of knowledge, any traumatic brain injury lawyer must constantly be reviewing the latest scientific and medical journals that seek to understand more about the brain. This article addresses issues that may arise in the treatment of memory loss as the research seems to have isolated that Arc activation and regulation controls certain memory functions. In most TBI cases, memory loss is affected. This research could potentially affect my clients' treatment and their cases, and that is important to me.

Source: Science Today at the University of California