The next time an Uber or Lyft rideshare driver picks you up, you might ask him or her when’s the last time they slept, and for how long. According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), fatigue and sleepiness are “inherent safety risks” for ridesharing drivers and their passengers. That conclusion was the opening […]
Medicare data recently analyzed by Kaiser Health News confirms what many have suspected about the quality of care found in most nursing homes in the U.S. It seems that – for a very long time now – there have been fewer nurses and caretaking staff than facilities have reported. The records also disclose frequent and […]
As the Kansas City Schlitterbahn water slide tragedy of 2016 winds its way toward final resolution, it is again drawing the news spotlight, even if the sensationalism of the accident and upcoming criminal negligence trials tend to draw attention from the bigger picture. Here’s what we now know that we didn’t on the day 10-year-old […]
There is no doubt that driving near an 18-wheeler can be intimidating. Fully loaded tractor-trailers can weigh as much as 80,000 pounds. When a behemoth of that size collides with a passenger car, it usually doesn’t bode well for the car’s occupants. While truck drivers are taught to keep their eyes out for other vehicles […]
The end of summer finds hundreds of thousands of Houston-area children returning to school. But this is not without hazards – especially when they’re traveling to and from school. In 2015, 663 vehicle crashes occurred in Texas school zones, seriously injuring 21 children. August and September alone saw 107 school zone traffic accidents. The most […]
Since the early 2000’s, hundreds of thousands of women have turned to a tiny, coiled device as a supposedly safe and effective method of birth control. As many as 750,000 women have chosen the Essure implant for sterilization, largely because they were told the device involved a gentle, non-surgical procedure with little risk of side […]
Question: When did the federal government help pay for someone’s $13 million palatial estate, complete with a backyard water park, along with the owner’s private G-7 jet? Answer: When its healthcare bureaucracy mistakenly gave money to a dentist charged with extensive Medicaid fraud. Consider the case of a former owner of a chain of clinics […]
By their nature, products which are designed for use with small children come with greater expectations of safety in both their design and manufacture. Because they are more physically vulnerable than adults and older children, infants and toddlers can be more seriously injured when a defective product injures them during normal use, even though it […]
The Labor Department wants to loosen protections that prevent teenagers from working longer hours at hazardous workplaces by relaxing some long-held Hazardous Occupations Orders (HO). And even though it touts this new initiative as offering new jobs to younger people, some Democratic members of Congress are loudly questioning why the Labor Department wants to expand the […]
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is moving forward with its plans to establish a new medical device approval process in early 2019 which is supposed to make new products available sooner. But a chorus of critics says this is a dangerous move for patients because it makes an already dubious approval system even […]
4.8