While most people may have been scratched by a dog at one point or another in playing with or petting a dog, a serious dog bite is a whole other matter. People can die from dog bite injuries – and children and the elderly are especially vulnerable – and a serious dog bite can require expensive medical bills, not to mention significant pain and suffering that can last for months and years. Determining whether a dog owner is liable for a dog bite injury is not always a straightforward matter, so an understanding of New York dog bite laws can be critical to knowing whether you have the ability to pursue a personal injury case for damages against the owner.

Even just five years ago, if you wanted a chauffeured ride in NYC, you were limited to the options of calling your local car service or standing outside and waiting for an empty, on-duty cab to drive by (which, unless, you were in prime areas of Manhattan, meant you could be waiting a long time). Now, ridesharing app services like Uber and Lyft have changed everything, bringing down prices for rides and extending car service all across the city. But, unlike taxi and livery services which tend to employ long-term drivers, these ridesharing apps employ “independent contractors” who may never have driven professionally before or even had face-to-face interaction with any types of supervisors or managers at Uber or Lyft. This calls into question the safety of the drivers working for these ridesharing apps, both with regard to their skills as drivers and their potentially criminal intentions, all leading to the question of whether it is safe to ride in an Uber or Lyft car alone.

The 2015 Lexus GS350 was driven by an unidentified 24-year old at the time it collided into the 12-year old at the intersection of Dahill and Cortelyou at 7 AM on a September Wednesday morning. Police arrived at the scene and appeared to conclude that the collision was an accident and did not issue a summons.

There are few experiences like being a pedestrian in New York City — people walk quickly to catch trains and buses and get to work on time; the sheer amount of people can fill the sidewalk and pour out onto the street, and as a pedestrian you are practically rubbing elbows with taxis, buses, cars, livery cabs, uber/lyft cars, and even pedicabs and horse carriages. While learning to get around the city quickly and efficiently is one of the survival mechanisms people pick up in living in the city, all too often an accident between a pedestrian and a vehicle can result in serious injury to the pedestrian, and even death. In fact, pedestrians involved in collisions with vehicles in New York City are ten times more likely to be injured than an occupant of the vehicle. You probably hear about random pedestrian accidents around the city from newspapers and the evening news, but, putting all the data together, there are some intersections that have historically been more dangerous than others for pedestrian accidents in New York.