Archived Webinars

TASA ID: 9075

Driver fatigue is a persistent safety risk, especially for commercial drivers and other fleet drivers who may be driving at night and/or for long distances.  Falling asleep-at-the-wheel (AATW) is the most dangerous fatigue risk.  A 3-4 second highway “microsleep” means a football field of unguided vehicle motion.  AATW crashes usually occur when drivers nod off and then drift off the road where they strike a fixed object or perhaps roll down an embankment.  Such crashes are often severe.  In fact, fatigue involvement in fatal crashes is five times that of minor crashes (FMCSA, 2014; Tefft, 2012).  In addition to human risks, AATW crashes can be high-liability.  Truck driver AATW cases have resulted in multi-million dollar “nuclear verdicts” when 80,000 lb. trucks strike passenger cars one-twentieth of their size.

Below are 39 ways that these crash risks can be reduced.  A bonus is that many of the same practices reducing driver drowsiness also boost overall human health, well-being and performance.  The first 18 are individual behaviors to promote in fatigue education programs.  The remaining 21 are organizational policies and practices which foster those same positive behaviors and outcomes.

TASA ID: 12689

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we offer our third article for this journal on handling emergency situations involving mass exposure contaminates [1][2]. One of us (Scaglione) has also authored a book speaking to proactive event prevention and effective resolution [3]. In the pages that follow, we provide an Emergency Preparedness Readiness Checklist that can serve as a roadmap for security executives to follow for more effective disaster management, and we expand on the checklist. We offer guidance on protecting hospital staff, patients, and visitors from becoming contaminated, and we address risk assessment engineering and design, proactive risk exposure mitigation, and innovative recovery strategies for moving forward once emergencies
have passed.

TASA ID: 16893

Surgical errors happen every day, and lead to numerous types of medical malpractice cases. Most surgical errors are simple things that could have been prevented if all of the members of the operating room team were on the “same page”. Communication in a hectic room with multiple things going on at the same time can often be the root of surgical errors that lead to patient injury.

That is why the Joint Commission for Accreditation on Healthcare Organizations (JACHO) implemented a multi-step practice called “the universal protocol” back in 2003 that is the standard for surgery today. The goal is to perform the right surgery on right site and on the right patient. This requires the surgical team to start implementing this standard from the pre-operative area, then onto surgery.

TASA ID: 12079

One of the most important decisions to be made by counsel in any litigation is which expert or experts to retain. A primary consideration in this decision is to determine whether there are any potential specialties or sub-specialties involved that are of importance to your case. For instance, in a product liability case involving a consumer appliance, an expert who has had experience in the design and manufacture of similar appliances might be a more appropriate candidate as an expert than one who has not been so involved with these products or processes.

TASA ID: 18867

Oil and gas pipeline construction in the U.S. has grown steadily over the years at a rate of approximately 10,000 miles per year. As of 2019, more than 2.6 million miles of natural gas and 219,000 miles of hazardous liquid pipelines were operating in the United States.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s PHMSA agency began tracking serious accidents in 2000. The latest failure rates reported by PHMSA show 0.01 failures per 1000 miles for hazardous liquid pipelines, 11 failures per 1,000,000 miles for gas distribution pipelines, and 0.008 failures per 1000 miles of gas transmission pipelines. Despite such low probabilities of failure, accidents do occur often making news due to the spectacular way they fail and the likelihood of deaths and injuries.