The last act of Congress in 2014 may avoid a government shutdown, but it also shuts down efforts to limit deaths in accidents caused by tired truck drivers.

Lawmakers recently passed an omnibus spending bill, providing $1.1 trillion in funding for the federal government through the end of fiscal year 2015. Like every spending bill, it offered goodies and giveaways to all types of businesses. One big favor, unfortunately, went to the nation's trucking industry.

The bill suspends two important ...

According to a new federal government report, 50,000 deaths from hospital mistakes across the United States were prevented between the years 2010 and 2013. Researchers concluded approximately 1.3 million fewer patients experienced health complications caused by hospitals, or about a 17 percent drop since 2010.

It's hard to pinpoint reasons for the drop, but it is good news. Yet the fact remains: too many people continue to suffer from preventable physician errors and much work remains to ...

How safe are hospitals in Missouri and Illinois? Well, the grades are in.

The Leapfrog Group, a non-profit group that advocates for quality and safety in the U.S. health system, recently published its Fall 2014 "Hospital Safety Score." The rating system is a twice-a-year grading of 2,500 hospitals across the country. According to the Washington, D.C. organization, each year 1,000 people die from preventable hospital errors.

The rating combines information from national health care ...

The good news is that more Americans are putting their phones down when they get behind the wheel. This may be due to more laws banning driving and the use of cell phones, and increased public awareness of the dangerous practice.

The bad news is that there remain many more serious driving distractions than cell phones.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute recently released two new reports examining the dangers of distracted driving. One study ...

The dangers of driving and texting are well known, and well reported. But what about texting during surgery?

Among the many causes of surgical error, the personal use of tablets and cell phones in the operating room is a relatively new phenomenon. The term for this is "distracted doctoring." But it may be growing, just as the use of social media and cell phones has exploded outside operating rooms by the U.S. population as a whole.

Survey Finds Cell Phone Use in Operating Rooms

In 2010, over 400 ...

Thousands of motorists die each year in accidents caused by large trucks. Apparently this may not be a major concern to the trucking industry.

The American Transportation Research Institute recently released its annual list of the top 10 issues facing North America's trucking industry. The poll included responses from 4,000 trucking industry representatives; about 70 percent trucking companies and 30 percent truck drivers. Safety was the top concern - but not what the industry can do to ...

When you're paid by the mile, as most over-the-road truckers are, every second counts. The more miles they drive in a given amount of time, the more money truckers make. So any delays can hit them hard in the wallet, as well as put others on the road in danger from a negligent truck driver trying to make up for lost time.

Part of any trucker's work schedule involves waiting while his or her truck is loaded and unloaded. Since they're generally compensated by the mile, most over-the-road truckers don't get ...

Earlier this year, Gray Ritter Graham filed a Missouri consumer fraud class action lawsuit against General Motors over several of its makes and models that have a potentially deadly design defect. The cars have a defective ignition switch, which could make them lose power, affecting the vehicles' air bags, power steering, and brakes.

Consumers now have more defective automobiles with which to be concerned.

The Safety Institute, a not-for-profit organization focusing on ...

The federal agency charged with overseeing the trucking industry is trying a new way to monitor the safety of new trucking companies. Will it work to keep unsafe truckers off the road?

In July 2013, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) began a revised program for checking the safety operations of start-up trucking companies. These companies are called "new entrants." After a new entrant begins operations, it is subject to the FMCSA's safety monitoring procedures for up to 18 ...

Healthcare providers are going to make mistakes. Tragically, their mistakes can be fatal. Some estimate as many as 440,000 people die in the United States each year from preventable medical errors, making them the third-leading cause of death in the country.

In this context, it was troubling to hear that the federal government pulled from public view data it has on serious medical errors made by hospitals. Fortunately, due to intense media reporting, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid ...