Paducah Legal Issues Blog

For motorcycle riders, there are few better things than being out on the open road. You feel a sense of freedom as your bike speeds down the highway and the wind rushes by you. You likely also experience a rush of adrenaline because part of the thrill of riding a motorcycle lies in the inherent danger.

Riding a motorcycle is simply more dangerous than riding in other types of vehicles. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a motorcycle accident is 28 times more likely to end in death than accidents in other vehicles.

However, the danger is not going to stop you from riding your motorcycle, but there are certain things you can do to help prevent accidents.

Workers in Kentucky may face a variety of hazards while on the job. Some of the most common hazards are slipping, tripping and falling. Slips generally occur because of rugs or mats that are torn or bunched up. They can also occur if a floor or other surface becomes oily or wet because of a spill or some type of weather event. Carpets can also be a tripping hazard for employees. Furthermore, poor lighting or objects left uncovered on a floor may result in a person tripping and getting hurt.

Many fatal workplace accidents are caused by vehicle collisions. These can occur when a car collides with a person repairing a road or otherwise working close to traffic.

When people in Kentucky take medications prescribed by their doctors, they expect to achieve improved health and reduced symptoms. However, medication errors can be serious and even deadly, and patients may not even realize that they are receiving an incorrect medication or the wrong dose. Many medication safety regulations and guidelines that exist currently do because risks are addressed after a significant incident has shown a vulnerability to these kinds of mistakes.

One source of medication errors can be the entry of incorrect information into a patient's file or electronic health record. Most medical clinics and hospitals now use EHRs to handle patients' medical files. However, it can be far too easy for people to have multiple records open at the same time and record the information on the wrong patient's file. According to one study, at least 14 medication orders are placed each day for the wrong patient in a large hospital with 1,500 beds. The mistakes can be made by prescribing physicians, nurses or even pharmacists. Requiring the person entering the information to confirm or retype the patient's identification can reduce this type of error significantly.

When people in Kentucky apply for Social Security Disability benefits, many face denials, at least in the initial stages of the process. However, applicants' need for benefits is underlined by the situations that they face when they attempt to get a job after a denial. Under the law, Social Security Disability Insurance mandates that beneficiaries must have a documented, serious medical condition that prevents them from doing any feasible job. People can be denied even if there is no indication that they will ever be able to obtain the type of job that evaluators believe they could theoretically perform.

Research conducted by Mathematica looked at people who were rejected at the initial stage of their SSD benefits application by a disability evaluator. They focused on people aged 50 or older who had sufficient years at work to be eligible for the program. In their study, they found that around half of the applicants received SSD benefits. For the denied applicants, they found that very few were able to work five years on; those who were found too disabled to return to their old job but theoretically capable of switching to other work had the worst time finding employment.