June 2005

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The driver of a tractor trailer has been charged with vehicular homicide, DUI and reckless driving after a fatal crash on I-285 during Friday afternoon rush hour, that killed three and reportedly injured seven others. See Channel 2, Channel 11 , and AJC coverage. Police said Monday that investigators now believe the tractor-trailer struck one vehicle from behind, starting the chain reaction.
The people killed were identified as Gwendolyn Beasley, 72, and Truett Beasley, 79, of Florida (parents of Mobile-based comedian known as “Killer Beaz,”) , and Kevin Brunelle, 26, from Warm Springs. Seven additional people were injured, two critically. “I saw the semi hit its brakes and after that happened I saw cars flying in the air, just going everywhere,” witness Sally Petermann said. The tractor-trailer stopped on top of an SUV. Wrecked cars littered the interstate.
The truck driver charged for the deaths is Ephantus Ngugi Gathuru, 49, of Woodstock. He was held at the DeKalb County Jail subject to a $150,000 cash only bond until an August 9th court date.
This crash occurred near a large number of trucking terminals. None of these news reports identify the trucking company for which Gathuru was driving, what he was hauling, whether the company is operating interstate or intrastate, or anything about the driver’s driving history or qualifications, or his immigration status.
Safersys indicates he was registered as an owner-operator with one truck and hauling general freight. However, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, 49 CFR 390.5, says that an independent contractor while in the course of operating a commercial motor vehicle is an employee of the trucking company. Therefore, trucking companies are financially responsible for the negligence of independent owner-operators who drive for them.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, 49 CFR 392.5 prohibits “any measured alcohol concentration or detected presence of alcohol, while on duty, or operating, or in physical control of a commercial motor vehicle.” 49 CFR §391.15, also provides for disqualification of a truck driver who operates a commercial motor vehicle while blood alcohol concentration is 0.04 % (half the level for DUI in Georgia).

Brunswick, GA, 6/17/05. Karissa Wetzel of Brunswick was killed when a dump truck traveling next to her blew a tire and struck her. The pickup in which she was traveling overturned several times, and she was ejected. See Jacksonville Channel 4 news story.
This report does not say whether the dump truck was an interstate or intrastate motor carrier, does not go into maintenance and inspection issues pertaining to motor carriers, and does not identify the manufacturer of the tire. All those are potentially significant issues.

A friend whose two children both have heart defects recently passed along to me waht he has learned about a couple of obscure options for somewhat affordable health care coveage.
First, the Insurance Commissioner’s Office has an Assigned Risk program. My friend pays $440 per month for family coverage; the plan pays 70% of charges with a $5000 deductible. It does not cover prescriptions, but drugs are counted under the deductible, and they give a discount for prescriptions. My friend has assigned risk coveage through Blue Cross and can go to any doctor.
Second, there is also a program offered through the state called “Care Entree.” Its not health INSURANCE, its Health Discount. Essentially you become the
health insurer, but you only pay that which the insurance company would pay. The Insurance Card you get looks exactly like any other and it uses PCHS (Private Care Health Services) as the plan administrator. Once again, you must agree to have a high deductable, but you only have to pay for those bills that the INSURANCE COMPANY WOULD HAVE TO PAY. That can be a tremendous DISCOUNT. But you must give them enough money to maintain the deductable in THIER ACCOUNT. So that they can pay that amount GUARANTEED. Then you pay that amount.
The plan cost roughly $75 per month, and includes a discount of prescription, Dental, chiropratic etc.

The long-haul trucking industry is facing a shortage of 20,000 drivers, according to the American Trucking Associations (ATA). And it will just get worse: By 2014, the industry group predicts, the shortage may increase to 111,000 if trends continue. The trucking industry hauls nearly 70 percent of the freight that is moved in the U.S. Of the 3.4 million truckers on the road, 1.3 million are long haulers, according to the ATA; that is the segment of the industry most affected by the shortage. See article.
Why? There are several reasons. First,the economy is growing annually at more than 3 percent, but the population from which carriers hire drivers is almost stagnant, growing annually at only half a percent. Second, average pay for long haul truck drivers has fallen slightly below the average pay for construction workers. Third, older drivers are retiring and younger drivers don’t want to spend that much time away from home. For quality of life reasons, they prefer to work closer to home. Third, driver turnover is extremely high, due to a combination of some drivers changing jobs every time child support garnishments catch up with them, and some simply seeking what appears to be a “greener pasture” with another company.
The implications for public safety are obvious. As the industry is forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel for drivers, inevitably there will be more inexperienced, inadequately trained, marginal drivers steering big rigs down the Interstate. This may be especially true with smaller trucking companies that are less inclined to enforce high standards and require more than lip service in compliance with Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution on Sunday featured a report on the courthouse security problems that helped set the stage for the murders of Judge Rowland Barnes, his court reporter and a deputy sheriff, and the subseqent crime spree of suspect Brian Nichols. “The failures reflect long-standing problems in the department � rampant absenteeism, conflicting allegiances, a disregard for physical fitness, ineffective management and poor emergency preparedness.” See article below.
None of this comes as a great surprise to those of us who have frequented the Fulton County Courthouse over the years.

Insurance executives and corporate risk managers know that family caregivers, caring for catastrophically injured loved ones, eventually will be ground down to exhaustion. And they know a wrongful death claim has far less value and jury appeal than a catastrophic injury claim, so if they can delay long enough they may save millions.
Therefore, in representing spinal cord and brain injury victims in claims for their catastrophic injuries, we have learned that the defense will generally follow a strategy of purposeful delay, knowing that the longer a quadriplegic goes without the full array of support services and equipment, the more likely he or she is to die before trial.

Future repairs of injured spinal cord and other nerves could be accomplished with the aid of stem cells grown in self-assembling three-dimensional biodegradable scaffolds of nanofibers.
The fibers, delivered in liquid form, self-assemble into a scaffold within seconds of making contact with the electrically charged ions surrounding cells. An amino acid in the fibers helps promote the growth of neurites — branches extending from nerves that help the cells communicate. The scaffolds then dissolve as cells grow into place. Preliminary work on repairing spinal-cord damage in mice and rats with neural-progenitor cells has been promising. However, this has not yet produced a treatment for spinal-cord injury in humans. See article.

As anyone familiar with the care of quadriplegics can readily attest, bedsores (decubitus ulcers) are a common complication of paralysis. A study conducted by NYU School of Medicine researchers, in collaboration with the Wound Healing Program at Columbia University, sheds new light on the molecular mechanisms underlying the development of chronic wounds, including bedsores.
Published in the July 1 issue of the American Journal of Pathology, the study states that skin cells get stuck in the middle of the normal healing process and cannot migrate to the wound site, due to an overabundance of a molecule called c-myc ( a product of the ubiquitous myc gene, which has been implicated in many human cancers ). This molecule is known to suppress cell migration and to cause the skin to thicken, obstructing reparative cells from reaching the edge of the wound. The cause of c-myc overproduction was found to be beta-catenin, a critical regulator of cell behavior. According to the researchers, beta-catenin activates the production of c-myc as well as other pathways that affect the migration, growth, and regulation of skin cells. Continue below

Brooke Ellison was only eleven when a car hit her, leaving her a vent-dependent quadriplegic. In a tremendous demonstration of grit and determination, she went on to graduate from Harvard with honors. Now the story of her life has been made into a move, directed by the late Christopher Reeve, The Brooke Ellison Story, is available from Sony on DVD. brooke ellison story.jpg
See movie trailer online: 1 2 3 4 .