Recent News – Smith & Griffith Legal Blog

Leading causes of serious workplace injuries Both employees and employers in South Carolina can be affected by workplace injuries. To emphasize this fact, a leading insurance company has come up with an annual list of the top causes of serious work-related injuries. “Serious” injuries were defined as those that caused an employee to miss five…

2017-2018 Nissan Rogues found with defective AEB South Carolina residents with 2017 or 2018 model Nissan Rogues should be aware that many of these vehicles have been found with defective automatic emergency braking systems. In March 2019, the Center for Auto Safety, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, recommended a formal investigation into the false activation…

Passengers in modern pickups have higher risk for injury, death South Carolina residents with modern pickup trucks should know that the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has been conducting crash tests on these vehicles. Since 2012, it has been conducting small overlap front collision tests for the driver’s side, and it started to test the…

IIHS tests reveal pickup truck accident vulnerabilities Many vehicle buyers in South Carolina choose pickup trucks with two rows of seats because they offer an attractive combination of practicality, durability and value, but a recent series of crash simulations conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety suggests that they do not do a very…

Study finds most farm machinery reaches vibration limits South Carolina agricultural workers could be experiencing elevated whole-body vibration levels while operating farm machinery, according to a recent study funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The study, which was conducted by researchers from the University of Iowa, has been recently published in…

Semi-truck accident fatalities on the rise South Carolina drivers will likely be interested in learning about the effect that large truck crashes are having in the United States. In 2017, 4,102 people were killed in accidents involving large trucks. Seventeen percent of the fatalities were the occupants of the truck. Fourteen percent of the fatalities…

Highway work zone wrecks 29 times likelier for distracted drivers Researchers at the University of Missouri have found that drivers who are distracted for any length of time are 29 times more likely to get in a crash or near-collision in a highway work zone. The distractions in question can be anything from calling or…

Tesla’s number of OSHA violations exceeds all its competitors The Tesla production facility in Fremont, California, received a total of 54 OSHA violations between 2014 and 2018, according to Forbes. This accounts for 75 percent of all the OSHA violations in that period among the nation’s top 10 auto plants. South Carolina residents may wonder…

Standardizing lockout-tagout for greater compliance Employers in South Carolina know that lockout-tagout procedures are necessary on job sites where dangerous machinery or hazardous energy sources are present. Compliance with lockout-tagout has consistently appeared on OSHA’s list of the top 10 most frequently cited standards, which means that employers need to do a lot more in…

Advocacy groups urge Congress to mandate truck safety systems Road safety advocacy groups in South Carolina and around the country have criticized the Department of Transportation’s efforts to introduce rules designed to reduce truck accidents and save lives. They want trucking companies to switch on the speed limiters fitted to their vehicles and install emergency…