Witnesses told police that the driver of the bus was driving erratically and speeding for at least two blocks before hitting a bicyclist, pedestrians and striking several moving cars before slamming into scaffolding at the construction site. Victims were pinned beneath the bus and fallen scaffolding. The bus also knocked down several power lines used to propel the city’s fleet of electrical buses.

City Sightseeing’s CEO Christian Watts issued a statement saying that the company inspects its vehicles every 45 days or less, and the bus that crashed was last inspected Oct. 25. Also, that the bus is registered with the DMV. However, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) maintains a list of all tour vehicles that carry more than 11 passengers in California and said the bus was not registered, therefore the California Highway Patrol never inspected the bus that crashed. City Sightseeing has been previously investigated by the CPUC for insurance and ownership issues, and was fined for failing to produce records during a safety audit. The tour company’s permit was revoked in 2013, but it is currently operating under a new one.

A bus accident oftentimes will result in a complex litigation. In many of these cases, there are often numerous victims and numerous defendants. This could result in a long delay before victims receive compensation for injuries. Family members may not have the funds to help through this difficult time, and banks don’t typically loan money to personal injury victims. Furthermore, money from a bank is a loan that must be paid back, with monthly payments. Litigation Funding Corporation can assist victims and family members through the difficult financial issues facing them. Applying for litigation funding can help with lost wages, medical expenses, and ongoing living expenses such as paying the mortgage or rent, utilities, or simply putting food on the table. In fact, litigation funding may be the only option to prevent victims from settling too soon and for too little. There are no upfront fees, no monthly payments, and repayment of the cash advance is only made when the case is won. It our client loses the case, repayment of the cash advance is completely waived. When the bills and expenses are covered, it is much easier to fight for justice to be served.

If you are suffering financially while waiting for a personal injury lawsuit to settle, consider litigation funding to give you a strategic advantage. Our quick and easy application and approval process can take less than 48 hours. Call Litigation Funding Corporation to discuss your financial needs.

Meanwhile, a new report from employment website Career Building shows that the long-term
care sector is likely to see job growth over the next five years. Home health care services are
expected to grow from 1.3 million jobs in 2014 to 1.7 million in 2019. The dovetails with new
Labor Department numbers showing job gains in the health care arenaLink Icon, with 408,000
jobs added in health care over the past year.

Read the full 7×7 interview here..

But the two services’ problems are more than regulatory. Uber and Lyft also face questions of liability in case of accidents and provisions for sufficient insurance coverage.

Each company has stated that it has excess liability insurance of up to $1 million per accident. That insurance takes over if the driver’s personal insurance is exhausted. Uber has expanded its insurance coverage several times already in 2014. In March, the company began covering the period when a driver has the app active but is not carrying passengers. That gap in coverage came to light when a driver in San Francisco struck and killed a 6-year-old girl. He was logged into his Uber app but was not carrying passengers.

Lyft operates slightly differently than Uber in that it markets itself more as a “ridesharing” service than a “vehicle for hire” service. Drivers do not directly charge fares; instead, passengers give them “donations.” These designations could add yet another layer of confusion over liability after the inevitable accidents that occur in any transportation service.

Regulators in Ohio and California have issued consumer alerts warning of possible gaps in liability insurance for so-called “transportation networking companies” (TNCs). A recent alert from the Ohio Insurance Director named medical payments coverage, uninsured motorist coverage and comprehensive coverage as possible shortcomings in TNC insurance.

If you need to speak with a auto accident attorney, Call Joyce & Reyes at 1.888.771.1529 or visit more of http://www.joyceandreyespa.com/.

A worker died after being crushed by a falling piece of equipment at a Volvo plant in California.

The accident occurred in San Leandro at a Volvo Construction Equipment and Services facility at about 9:30 a.m. on February 13, according to fire department spokeswoman Aisha Knowles.

The 48-year-old field service technician was working under a tractor that had been raised onto support stands when the vehicle slipped and fell onto him. The man, whose name has not yet been released, was pronounced dead at the scene. No other injuries were reported.

Peter Melton, spokesman for the California Department of Occupation Safety and Health, said the company had not previously been cited for any safety violations.

The company released a statement saying that work at the facility stopped immediately while the accident was investigated and that the company’s condolences and prayers were with the worker’s family.

The man is the third worker to die in an industrial accident in the San Francisco Bay Area in less than a week. On February 7, two workers were killed in San Francisco’s GGI Granite Company when a granite slab fell on them.

In industrial accidents like these, a number of important questions must be investigated. Was the equipment properly maintained? Was each worker involved in the accident properly trained in all relevant safety procedures? Were all safety procedures properly followed? Despite the expertise and diligence of government inspectors, sometimes it takes the work of a dedicated personal injury attorney to uncover all the facts.

We Focus our Practice Exclusively on Wrongful Death and Critical Injury Cases – Contact a personal injury lawyer at The Lietz Law Firm by calling 866-554-1238 or learn more by visiting http://www.lietzlaw.com/.

State regulators are nearing a decision on a proposed $2.25 billion penalty for the company. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Anthony Earley said in an interview in August that a fine of that size could bankrupt the utility. San Bruno officials say PG&E’s own expert witness refuted that idea.

Earley, who became CEO in 2011, canceled a meeting planned with city officials for April 30, 2013, as his office expressed “a level of dissatisfaction” with statements the city made to the press, according to City Manager Connie Jackson.

Jackson said that the time for settlement talks is running out, as the administrative law judges in charge of the penalty process are nearing a conclusion.

San Bruno has already received a $50 million trust and $70 million in restitution for the blast, according to PG&E spokeswoman Brittany Chord.

To complicate matters, corrosion was recently discovered on a pipeline beneath San Carlos, some 15 miles from San Bruno. Jackson said the discovery shows that PG&E has not learned the lessons of the fatal 2010 blast.

Chord said the San Carlos line is operating within safety parameters established following the San Bruno incident.

In a recent interview, San Bruno Mayor Jim Ruane said that PG&E has to pay. “And it has to hurt,” he added.

We Focus our Practice Exclusively on Wrongful Death and Critical Injury Cases – Contact a personal injury lawyer at The Lietz Law Firm by calling 866-554-1238 or learn more by visiting http://www.lietzlaw.com/.

Despite a push by advocates for advance care planning, most Americans do not have a living will or other advance health care directive in place. This includes even many patients with serious health conditions, who should be considering end-of-life decisions such as whether they want to be resuscitated or intubated, and who is designated to make decisions about their care if they are incapacitated.

Much of the push has been directed toward encouraging people, especially those advanced in age or facing a serious illness, to discuss end-of-life decisions with their loved ones. Recently a team at the University of California, San Francisco found success with a new approach: offering doctors incentives for documenting their patients’ advance care decisions.

The research team came up with a simple form for doctors to use, asking patients whether they had preferences regarding end-of-life care, whether those preferences were recorded anywhere, such as in a living will, a brief summary of those wishes, and the identity and contact information of any person designated to make health care decisions for the patient.

If residents recorded that information for at least 75 percent of patients discharged, they got a $400 bonus. The program worked, bringing the percentage of patients who had their preferences recorded up from 22 percent to 90 percent.

The program is a good reminder that setting up an advance health care directive can be a fairly simple and straightforward process.

For more information about our elder law services, visit www.elderlawnewyork.com.

The annual cost of a nursing home stay in New York City has increased dramatically, according to an annual survey by Genworth.

In Manhattan, a private room in a nursing home costs $180,000 per year, making Manhattan second only to San Francisco in cost. Nursing homes in other parts of New York are expensive as well. The cost is $160,000 per year in Long Island and $140,000 in Queens. New York is far above the overall median nursing home cost in the United States, which is $84,000 per year.

The cost is significant for nearly all families, and staggering for many, especially given that the average stay in a nursing home is two-and-a-half years.

Experts say high prices in New York are driven by higher costs for property, maintenance, insurance and staffing.

While the cost of a nursing home stay has continued to rise about 5 percent per year, the cost of home health care has remained more in line with the national average. The average cost of a home health aide in Manhattan is $22 per hour, while the national average is $19 per hour.

Learn more at http://www.elderlawnewyork.com/elder-law/.

Experts predicted the 2025 availability date at the 2013 Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress, according to the Detroit News. The SAE issues standards that affect every aspect of car design. Panelists at the conference said that “semiautonomous” vehicle technology, which combines steering and vehicle-detection systems to keep cars in the lane and far enough away from the vehicle in front of them, would be available much sooner.

Much of the debate about self-driving cars centers on the potential for distracted driving. In theory, autonomous vehicles have the potential to greatly reduce traffic accidents, since most crashes are caused by human error. However, a malfunction could have serious consequences. And if drivers cannot safely attend to other matters while the vehicle is traveling, then the benefits of the technology are greatly diminished. In October, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that it would spend $1.75 million on a multiyear research endeavor to determine what human controls would be necessary in self-driving cars.

A recent survey found that 49 percent of drivers would prefer a driverless car. Google has successfully driven a robotic Toyota Prius over 140,000 miles in heavy traffic in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Many features of self-driving cars are already available in today’s models, such as lane departure warning systems, crash-avoidance, self-parking and adaptive cruise control.

Convenience is one of the features consumers welcome most in self-driving cars. Autonomous vehicles offer the promise of turning “wasted” driving time into time available for other activities. All of the activities that currently amount to distracted driving – cell phone use, eating, conversations with passengers – could be engaged in without threatening safety. Commuters could get work done or simply relax as their cars transport them to their destinations.

The potential for enormous gains in traffic safety is another predicted benefit of driverless cars. Google has claimed that at some point in the future, self-driving car systems will be able to decrease traffic accidents by 90 percent. This would amount to saving almost 30,000 lives annually, preventing nearly 2 million injuries and decreasing costs due to car crashes by about $400 billion.

Paul Greenberg is a car accident lawyer in Chicago and car crash attorney with Briskman Briskman & Greenberg. To learn more call 1.877.595.4878 or visit http://www.briskmanandbriskman.com/.

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On September 9, 2010, a gas pipeline exploded in San Bruno, a suburb of San Francisco. The blast killed eight, injured dozens, and destroyed some 38 homes.

In 2011, the National Transportation Safety Board ruled unanimously that the explosion was caused by a “litany of failures” by the company as well as insufficient oversight by safety officials.

The City of San Bruno issued a separate recommendation that PG&E be fined not less than $1.25 billion, plus pay at least $1 billion toward inspecting and upgrading its pipelines. PG&E is expected to file its own proposal soon, and a utilities commission judge will issue a final ruling on how much the company will pay later this year.

The utilities commission’s recommendation calls for the entire $2.25 billion to be spent on inspecting, upgrading, and replacing hundred of miles of gas pipelines rather than being added to the state’s general revenue fund.

An attorney for consumer advocate group Utility Reform network pointed out that the required infrastructure investments will lessen the impact of the fine on PG&E.

“This is a very big penalty, but it’s not quite as big as it seems when you account for the tax benefits PG&E would accrue,” Marcel Hawiger said.

We Focus our Practice Exclusively on Wrongful Death and Critical Injury Cases – Contact a personal injury lawyer at The Lietz Law Firm by calling 866-554-1238 or learn more by visiting http://www.lietzlaw.com/.

In one of the first large studies on Alzheimer’s in African-Americans, researchers found the same gene variants that previous studies found in Caucasian Alzheimer’s patients. APoE4, a gene long known to correlate with higher Alzheimer’s risk in Caucasian people, was identified in a similar percentage of African-American patients as Caucasian patients. Another, ABCA7, was found at slightly higher rates in African-Americans with the disease.

In an editorial accompanying the publication of the research, Dr. Robert L. Nussbaum of the University of California, San Francisco, said that finding the genes in African-Americans supports theories that they contribute to susceptibility to Alzheimer’s.

The study analyzed data from 6,000 African-Americans over the age of 60. Approximately 2,000 had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers determined that ABCA7 confers an 80 percent increase in the risk of Alzheimer’s in African-Americans, compared with a risk of 10 to 20 percent among whites. Even 80 percent is considered modest; a gene conferring significant risk would at least double the likelihood of a disease. And the gene is fairly uncommon even among African-American Alzheimer’s patients, leaving the cause of the disease mostly unexplained.

ABCA7 helps move cholesterol in and out of cells and is also suspected of influencing the development of heart disease. That may explain why many Alzheimer’s patients are diagnosed with cardiovascular disease and vice-versa.

The elder law attorneys at Hook Law Center assist Virginia families with will preparation, trust & estate administration, guardianships and conservatorships, long-term care planning, special needs planning, veterans benefits, and more. To learn more, visit http://www.hooklawcenter.com/ or call 757-399-7506.

If you have Alzheimer’s disease don’t be afraid to live life to the fullest, travel, and hope for a cure!

Barb and her husband planned a trip to San Francisco as a birthday gift for Barb to traverse down memory lane where her parents started their lives together. They were wed in San Francisco and made many friends.

(Related: Alzheimer’s Disease: What To Look For)

Her dad was stationed at an army base there, but when they tried to find it they discovered it no longer existed. Barb’s mother worked at a bank in Carmel. They ended up leaving due to their family ties in Milwaukee, but their hearts never left the bay. Years ago she had been there while her husband was training for his job at Fireman’s Fund. Now, her brother-in-law lives there so they decided to visit him and discover the places Barb’s parents had always talked about.

(Related: Duke Medicine Study Supports Family History and Risk for Alzheimer’s)

The first thing she packed was her meds, including the ones she takes for Alzheimer’s disease to amplify memory and clarvescence. She packed light so she handle her own suitcase and not overwhelmed with too many articles of clothing. The tennis shoes she packed were too small, in-fact, she had intended to give them to her daughter. As a result, she purchased a new pair in Carmel, which turned out to be splendid.

(Related: Next Generation Alzheimer’s Disease Model)

After his time in the service, her dad hoped to open a drug store. His buddy from the army was a pharmacist and wanted a business partner. Her dad’s role was to be in retail and advertising — he was a commercial artist. Both Barb’s husband and brother-in-law surprised her by finding her parent’s favorite coffee shop in Carmel. They had an old photo of her mother standing in front of it. They asked her if she recognized it before showing Barb the original picture, and taking a photo with her now in front of it.

Barb’s mother also had Alzheimer’s. Now, her sister is living with it — she is 90 years old. And at age 66, Barb too, has Alzheimer’s. Her advice is to live to your potential and in the moment. Don’t be afraid to travel with caregivers and your meds. Enjoy each and every day and hope for a cure.

Read more: http://alzheimersblogger.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/traveling-with-alzheimers/

Christopher J. Berry is a Michigan elder law attorney Dedicated to helping seniors, veterans and their families navigate the long-term care maze. To learn more visit http://www.michiganelderlawattorney.com/ or call 248.481.4000