Brooklyn New York Legal Blog

Many New York drivers have safety concerns about sharing the roads with self-driving vehicles. Among the safety risks involved in programming driverless vehicles is the fact that self-driving cars are learning dangerous driving habits from the humans who program them.

An associate professor of computer science at Arizona State University shares these concerns. He believes that the teams developing driverless cars focus too heavily on creating an experience like that of a human-driven vehicle. To create such an experience, the development teams allow automated vehicles to learn to drive from human drivers. The professor claims that this also allows vehicles to learn unsafe driving habits.

Statistically, 1 in 10 construction workers is injured every year in New York and across the U.S. The private construction industry saw 937 fatalities in 2015, which was a seven-year high in this country. It goes without saying that the construction industry is one of the most dangerous. Thankfully, advances in technology could improve the safety of construction sites if companies choose to invest in new equipment.

Backup accidents are all too common on construction sites because workers can become confused as to what direction the alarms are coming from, especially when the alarms emit the same beeping noise. This is where new reversing alarms come in. Brigade Electronic, for instance, has released the White Sound BBS-TEK reversing alarm that emits the sound of white noise, easily distinguished and heard through headphones or ear defenders.

Drivers in New York may face increased danger on the road with the arrival of daylight savings time. When people "spring ahead" by setting their clocks an hour forward, they could be more prone to drowsy driving the next day, a study says. Since the clock moves forward one hour, it is possible for people to get less sleep than usual on the night of the change by going to bed and waking up at the same time as every other day.

People often refer to the spring time change as "losing an hour of sleep," but for drivers on the road, any kind of sleep deprivation could have dangerous results. Drowsy drivers could be easily distracted and even more likely to doze off behind the wheel, causing serious and even deadly motor vehicle accidents. While many individuals may expect that only one hour of sleep less on one night will not have an impact on their driving performance, even a small shift in sleep patterns can have a big impact, especially for people who drive at night on the day of the time change.

It is common knowledge that construction work is dangerous and has one of the highest rates of workplace injuries and fatalities. Workers' compensation claims and lawsuits are normal and encourage employers to do all they can to make the site as safe as possible for workers.

What happens, though, if a construction-site accident in New York is your fault? For example, what if you had been drinking earlier and then made a mistake that led to your injury? Can that fact become evidence against you so you are ineligible for compensation?