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By Personal Injury Attorney Amy Gaiennie of Gaiennie Law Office 

Since 2010, pedestrian deaths have been on the rise, which does not bode well for the most recent test results of pedestrian detection systems by AAA. Earlier this year, AAA conducted several test scenarios on a track, replicating various scenes of pedestrians encountering vehicles to see how these systems faired. The results were less than ideal.

The first scenario that was tested was an adult crossing in front of a vehicle (installed with the detection system) while it traveled at both 20 miles per hour and 30 miles per hour during the day. An additional test was conducted at night, with the vehicle going 25 miles per hour. This scenario yielded the most positive results.

With a vehicle traveling 20 miles an hour in daylight, and the pedestrian detection systems on all four vehicles avoided a collision 40% of the time. All of the pedestrian detection systems fail the test while going 30 miles per hour, however.

The second scenario involved child pedestrian-safety. A child darting out in front of the vehicle from two parked cars was tested. This scenario was tested with the vehicle going 20 miles per hour and again at 30 miles per hour. This scenario proved the most deadly. A collision occurred 89% of the time with a vehicle traveling 20 miles per hour. With the vehicle going over 30 miles per hour, all of the detection systems failed.

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By Personal Injury Attorney Andrew Garza of Connecticut Trial Firm, LLC

Smoking electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), also called “vaping,” quickly gained popularity in the United States with little known about the health or safety risks associated with this practice. Vaping became especially popular among teenagers, and flavored e-cigarette cartridges or vape pods became commonplace, a pleasant scent masking a potentially deadly practice.

Very little was known about the side effects of vaping when these e-cigarettes hit the market a few years ago. This lack of knowledge is partially due to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) extending its timeline for important information on the health risks of smoking e-cigarettes.

After it was decided in 2016 that the FDA could regulate electronic cigarettes, a two-year deadline was imposed on companies to provide important health and safety data on the implications and side effects that could occur. However, the FDA extended this initial deadline from 2016 to 2022, allowing consumers to purchase and smoke e-cigarettes for years without having any crucial health data regarding the negative health effects of e-cigarettes.

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