Child safety experts have always emphasized the vulnerability of young children in the event of a crash. Parents are continually schooled in the media about the proper use of car seats and booster seats. The federal government even established guidelines for parents of young children; recommending that parents place infants up to 20 pounds in a rear-facing child seat and toddlers weighing between 20 to 40 pounds in a child seat with a harness. Children weighing more than 40 pounds who aren’t at least 4 feet 9 inches tall should be in a booster seat.
Wherever you find disaster, you almost always find someone attempting to profit. Following hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the summer of 2005, thousands of water-damaged vehicles showed up in car lots all across the southern United States, many with no visible problems. They were sold outside of the hurricane’s heavy-hit areas, to avoid suspicion of flood damage. Though in excellent physical condition, these refurbished cars could still be prone to problems, which is why concealing their disastrous history is against the law.
Since hazardous conditions like high heat and toxic fumes are central to welding, it is no surprise that without strict safety procedures, injury, short- or long-term illness and potentially even death could occur when welding. Though there are more than 80 different types of welding processes, each with its own set of concerns, many safety precautions are common.
In case you haven’t noticed, winter has arrived and with it comes ice, snow, slippery roads, and poor visibility. Winter driving is necessary and nothing can be done to avoid it.
The federal Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 330,000 complaints in 2009, and more than a third of them ended up in the hands of law enforcement. The damages from those referred to the authorities totaled more than a half billion dollars. The Government Accountability Office estimated that cyber crime cost U.S. organizations $67.2 billion in 2005; that number has likely increased since then. With so much of business today done electronically, organizations of all types are highly vulnerable to theft and corruption of their data. It is important for them to identify their loss exposures, possible loss scenarios, and prepare for them.
According to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, a division of the Insurance Resource Council, one in five Americans or 45 million people say it is okay to defraud an insurance company in certain circumstances. Furthermore, according to a 2008 Four Faces study by the IRC, consumer tolerance of of specific insurance schemes has increased over the past ten years.
The market for trucking insurance, like most other insurance markets, has taken a hard left turn since 2001. Under the circumstances, it is best to know and understand what underwriters are looking for when sifting through insurance applications. Knowing what looks favorable, what looks bad and what looks just plain ugly, can be the ticket to affordable quality coverage.
When transporting children in your vehicle (whether they are your own children or others), it is important to ensure that they are properly restrained. Remember that cars are designed to comfortably and safely seat adult-sized passengers, and child restraints are designed to compensate for this.
There are many dangers that can contribute to car accidents, but driver fatigue is by far one of the largest. Falling asleep behind the wheel is a serious problem, causing more than 100,000 accidents per year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. For most of these fatigue-based crashes, the culprit is monotony on the road. Interstates and high-speed or long, rural highways, for example, are the most frequent areas where drivers fall asleep. Studies done by the NHTSA have proven that driving with fatigue is equally if not more dangerous than driving intoxicated, with very similar results: impaired reflexes, blurred vision, inability to stay focused, etc. The NHTSA has estimated that drivers falling asleep at the wheel cost about $12.5 billion annually in insurance claims and medical costs.
According to a study released in July 2006 by the National Academy of Social Insurance, employer costs for workers’ compensation grew faster than combined cash and medical payments to injured workers in 2004, the most recent year for which data is available. Combined benefit payments for injured workers increased 2.3 percent in 2004 compared to prior year levels, while employer workers’ compensation costs rose by 7.0 percent for the same period.