by Bill Pickett
Welcome to LGP’s first blog of the new year! Having worked as a trial attorney here in Yakima, Washington for the past 27 years, I’ve seen some pretty unfortunate things over the years. Today, in an effort to help you avoid those things and promote mindfulness about best safety practices, I will be sharing with you some stories of the injury cases I have seen. This will cover a variety of topics:
- A Quick Warning
- Inattention Endangers Children
- Parking Lot Safety with Kids
- Spark Explosions – An Extreme Burn Case
- Boating Safety
Trigger Warning
Some of the material that we’re going to discuss today regarding catastrophic injury and loss of life is difficult to read. If you are someone who does not want to read about what we have to say on this topic, please stop reading now and focus your attention somewhere else. Protecting our mental health is another important aspect of safety, so please take care of yourself.
Inattention Endangers Children
The cases that stand out to me in the worst possible way over the years are, hands down, cases involving children. Those are the ones where you wish you could have given people an advance warning about what safety measure to take before the tragedy occurred. There have unfortunately been a slew of these incidents.
One example of this would be drownings, which are frequently preventable. Oftentimes inattention plays a key role in such catastrophic events. A huge part of ensuring a child’s safety is just to pay attention.
This statement is in no way meant to cast blame or make anyone feel criticized. Inattention is a part of human life – we all have many things competing for our attention. It’s easy for our focus to be distracted, especially in today’s world. Acknowledging this fact can help us find strategies to engage our focus during known, higher-risk times, such as when supervising a child’s safety. Whether they are swimming, walking through a parking lot, or present in the kitchen, maintaining focus during risky activities is of the utmost importance.
This does not mean you have to be hyper-vigilant at all times, please don’t hear me saying that. I think I became a little over-cautious as a parent, partly from dealing with so much trauma and loss in my professional life and from representing others in those situations. My children would tell you I see threats to their safety around every corner, even when there are none, so I’m not encouraging that. What I am encouraging is a thoughtful level of attention.
Attention to Kid Safety in Parking Lots
I already mentioned that one place where kids require a lot of your attention is parking lots. It seems so simple, doesn’t it – it’s just a place you go to park your car. But if you have children, you soon realize you need to be on high alert, especially if they are like mine and they love to run. My wife and I learned that when we parked our car and got our kids out, it was essential to have a hand on them to ensure their safety.
It’s a very common scenario to face distractions in a parking lot. The parent might make it to the car with their child, open the door, and the child starts climbing in. The parent opens their own door, maybe thinking of something else, maybe juggling a purchase, and they don’t realize the child never fully made it into the vehicle. Maybe the child races out into the parking lot, and the next thing that the parent hears is the horrific sound of their child being run over.
Now this is a parent’s worst nightmare being played out in front of them in real time. They look and their child is under the wheels of a huge vehicle. The parent finds themself pounding on the window of the car, trying to shatter the window. They are screaming and losing their mind, because the only thing they know is they’ve got to get to their child, and this vehicle weighing thousands of pounds is crushing them to death. The driver panics and doesn’t really understand what’s going on, and they might back over the child again.
This is something that people never forget. The death of a child is one of the most difficult kinds of cases to deal with, because this loss is really the sacred being torn from someone’s life. Parents have to cope with the horrific fact that they survived, but their child did not.
Then there are the individuals who were inattentive leading up to the death, and the sense of guilt for having caused such harm is devastating. I’ve taken a number of depositions from folks who have caused harm, and it’s incredibly painful and distressing — emotionally, spiritually, and physically — to these individuals who have caused the loss of a life through their own action. As a lawyer, it’s something that I have to be sensitive to when helping families try to move forward and heal from a catastrophic loss like this.
Spark Explosions — An Extreme Burn Case
Another example of preventable, catastrophic loss involves burns. This is another worst-case scenario. We have burns involving death claims, where the victim’s life has ended. Again, this is extremely difficult to navigate spiritually, emotionally, and physically.
In other instances, the burn victim survives. They are terribly injured, but they live. And some of the most horrific burn injuries I have seen have come from representing people injured by static spark explosions. For those who might not know what a static spark explosion entails, think about walking across the carpet as a kid. Then you touch fingers with a sibling or a friend and you feel a little zap – that’s static electricity, which our bodies can generate just by moving through the world.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) warns there is potential for this generated static to discharge at a gas pump nozzle. This potential increases with cold weather and if you re-enter your vehicle as it fuels. The next time you go to fill up your car, if you actually read the safety warnings that are on the gas pumps, you will notice that most have a warning that says ‘be cautious and aware of static sparks’, because they can ignite the fuel vapors and generate a massive explosion. This can cause first, second, or third degree burns depending on how many layers of skin the fire goes through, and the pain, shock, and disfigurement that can result are incredibly traumatic.
I remember the first time I was able to watch a video of a client who was burned severely. Around 55% of their body was burned with third and fourth degree burns, and I was shocked at the speed at which it happened. There was this little blip of light on the screen, and then a massive fireball ignited around the client in the next instant – that’s how quickly it happens.
One of the ways to practice safety when dealing with gasoline or other ignitable vapors present in the air around you is to refrain from using cell phones. This is a big culprit in explosions, yet how many people pull up to the gas pump, begin filling, and check their phones while they wait? That little cell phone can cause a static spark and endanger you, which is why you will often see safety warnings saying ‘no cell phone usage’ around gas pumps. And absolutely do not smoke cigarettes at the pump – that one feels like more of a no-brainer, but I still see this occurring.
Just read the signs. Fuel your vehicle the way they tell you to fuel it. 99.9% of the time, you’ll be safe and you’ll get your gasoline and drive on into your future.
Boating Safety
A final safety issue that I have often encountered here in the Pacific Northwest in the summertime is boating accidents. When you put individuals on a boat, they are ready to have a fun, good time, but this seems to cause a drop in their attention to and awareness of safety concerns. This is a problem because boating accidents are huge events that are often catastrophic or life altering.
I remember one case where a family member was being towed on an inner tube. The family thought it would be great fun to pull on the rope and let go as the boat went racing over the water, which pops the rope and causes the inner tube to jump. Everyone is having a great time. However, this process of pulling on the rope is pulling on the carabiner that is hooked into the inner tube. The carabiner is getting stretched open bit by bit, into a shape resembling a fish hook.
Now there’s another pull on the rope, and the carabiner comes free from its connection point. It then wraps around the leg of the person who is being towed and hooks into their hamstring. The boat is still going full speed, so the individual’s leg is ripped in an awful way. You can imagine the chaos that followed – massive screaming, people panicking, a ton of blood in the water, and everyone wondering what exactly happened. Sometimes it’s not even clear in the aftermath to people what happened, and that’s one of the things we as lawyers might need to try and reconstruct.
So the takeaway message is yes, have fun, but don’t lose sight of safety. Let’s not come up with creative ways to tow people in the boat, let’s stick to known safety measures and exercise common sense. This solution seems painfully obvious in hindsight, so let’s proactively bear it in mind looking into the future. Boating is about having fun, creating good memories with family, and staying safe, so let’s keep it that way.
In Closing
I encourage fun in whatever you do, and think it is wonderful to enjoy special moments with family and friends. We here at LGP Law want those moments to stay wonderful and special, so please remain reasonably vigilant and focused, and take simple safety precautions to avoid those things that could cause personal injury and harm. That’s the word of the day – until next time, have fun and be aware.