Butte County Personal Injury Blog

In the last few years, the nation has questioned when the “wildfire season” truly happens. A decade ago, most would tell you that it typically happens in the late summer and early autumn months. People often cite hot temperatures, dry conditions and frequent lightning strikes as the main causes in many devastating wildfires.

These days, more states are becoming aware of how high the chances are for wildfires are for the whole year. California’s multiple disastrous wildfires in 2018 is a prime example of how they can happen just about any time during the year. Even though California has a significantly different environment from South Dakota, local ranchers shouldn’t assume that they can rest easy once it gets colder outside. They need to be aware of the potential risks that can cause wildfires during the winter.

We’ve all seen it while we’re driving, the person in the car next to you or behind you is looking down, eyes off the road, hand on their phone. Phone use and distracted driving is risky driving behavior with serious consequences. Distracted driving crashes kill thousands of people each year.

Distractions behind the wheel can be anything that takes your attention from the task at hand–a meal, your GPS or other passengers. But according to the Centers for Disease Control, texting while behind the wheel is the most dangerous. Texting combines three dangerous factors–it takes your eyes off the road, your hands off the wheel and your attention from driving. When you send a text while traveling at 55 MPH, you cover the span of a football field in that five seconds–plenty of time to cause an accident.

The reason so many motorists receive warnings about roads in rural areas is because they often lack proper maintenance. Construction primarily focuses on streets near larger cities, so anyone speeding through the rough countryside has a higher chance of hitting a pothole or veering into a ditch off the borderless road. They also receive warnings on driving slower when construction does happen on a road so they can avoid crashing into one of the workers, machines or many signs occupying the area.

When a street is all fixed and there are no workers or construction signs in sight, you would think you would no longer have to worry about an accident from faulty road conditions. Unfortunately, there are some instances where construction workers can rush to complete their job early so they no longer have to hear complaints from the hundreds of people who want to use the road. Any oversights they make during the finalization of the road can be costly, as demonstrated by the recent story of a young man in South Dakota forced to deal with a permanent spine injury potentially because of one contractor’s mistake.

Farmers in South Dakota are rushing to get their work done in the fall to make sure their crops are good for the holidays and to prepare their land for the winter. This also means that it is one of the more dangerous seasons of the year for them as their quicker work approach can lead to some serious accidents.

Farming is one of the deadliest occupations in the nation with the amount of safety hazards in and outside of the fields. Combine this with some locations not providing sufficient training or supervision, and a lot of workers can be at serious risk. If you or a loved one are working this physically demanding career field, you should be especially careful around these areas of your workplace.