All motor vehicle users owe a duty of care to other road users, including other drivers, cyclists, motorcyclists, and pedestrians. Any one driving a motor vehicle in the UK must by law hold a full UK driving licence, have a valid MOT certificate, valid insurance documents and road tax. If a driver on the road only holds a provisional driving licence then they must be accompanied by a fully qualified driver who is over 21 and has been driving for at least three years.

 The driver of a motor vehicle may be regarded as negligent if they become involved in a road accident and it is revealed that:

• The driver of the vehicle was speeding
• Failed to break
• Failure to control the vehicle
• Doesn’t regard traffic signs or warnings
• Fails to keep a look out for other road users

If you have been involved in a road accident it is important that you take the details of the other party involved. They should have car insurance, however in some cases drivers choose not to, by doing this they are breaking the law and could face a prison sentence.
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Some people love motorcycles, some people steer clear of them at all costs. The people that love them see them as a huge convenience for avoiding the congestion on our roads. Motorcycles are the faster way of getting around, as they can easily cut through traffic. Motorcycles and mopeds are becoming more and more popular. A lot of motorcyclists feel that riding their motorcycle is a much more exciting and exhilarating way to get around.

Although there are many positive points of using a motorcycle there are also a lot of negatives. As a motorcyclist you are 57 times more likely to be killed in an accident than a car driver. You represent approximately 1% of the traffic on our roads in the UK but account for 19% of all deaths and serious injuries.

The Government recently launched a campaign called Think! One of the things they wanted to gain from the campaign was to make car drivers more aware of bikers, and to see them as people not just objects. They released figures which stated that 493 motorcyclists died and 5,556 were seriously injured in road collisions in 2008 in Great Britain.
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Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 are designed to protect employees from any injuries caused by manual handling at work. Manual handling is not just specified to lifting but also to carrying, lowering, pushing and pulling. In order for employers to make sure their employees know how to do manual handling in a way they won’t injure themselves, they must provide manual handling training.

Records kept by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), state that the most common injury sustained by people carrying out manual handling at work is a back injury, although injuries to arms and feet are also fairly common. Records kept by the HSE also say that more than a third of all accidents at work that resulted in the person been injured for more than three days are related to manual handling at work.

A lot of us think that it’s only workers in places such as factories, building sites and farms that are at risk of having a manual handling accident. The truth is, regardless of where you work, whether it is an office, hospital or shop, etc, you’re still at risk.
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Construction sites have a large variety of risks, making the possibility of an accident quite high. Workers are faced with operating hazardous equipment and working with unstable materials.  Construction work also requires a lot of manual work, so you are constantly putting your body through demanding work and all this strain could lead to an accident at work.

Construction sites are one of the most dangerous places to work, with the industry approximately employing 7% of the UK workforce. Dangers include working at height, working with hazards on ground level, operating heavy machinery and large amounts of manual handling. Each of these situations needs to be assessed before hand, to do this your employer should carry out a risk assessment.

As your employer is aware of all of the risks on site, they have a duty of care to their employees to make sure that they do everything necessary to prevent injury on the construction site. If they were to neglect this duty of care they would be putting you at risk of injury, and themselves at risk from an insurance claim.
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The BBC News website released reports on September 15^th with the story that at least 25 people, all of them tourists, sustained injuries whilst on a boat trip from Turkey to Greece.

The accident happened at approximately 11:20am local time when the Turkish-flagged Aegean Cat catamaran boat crashed into a jetty on the Greek Island of Kos. The boat had been carrying over 200 tourists, most of them British, from the Turkish town of Didim to Kos on a day trip.

It is understood that at least 25 people sustained injuries and the majority of these suffered fairly minor cuts and bruising caused by broken glass, however at least 5 had sustained more serious injuries in the form of broken bones. The authorities have confirmed that luckily none of the injuries was life threatening. All those injured were treated at the scene and were then taken to a nearby hospital were some remain.
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OK – so my latest article discussed a similar thing – i.e. the dangers of irresponsible driving, and the reason why we have so many laws in place to reduce accidents on our increasingly busy roads. This next story will quite simply shock you – apparently there can be absolute motorway madness on Britain roads…

According to sources from the Daily Mail, an hours’ worth of photographs on the M25, one of Britain’s busiest motorways, showed 14 drivers all breaking the law in such weird and wonderful ways; although wonderful isn’t perhaps the right word to use given how serious an accident on the motorway can be!

I urge you to have a look at the website and browse through the photos – some are unbelievable.
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If you have been subject to food poisoning then you’ll know how unpleasant and painful it can be. Depending on the type of virus you contracted from the poisoning you will undergo different types of symptoms. These can be vomiting, headaches, dizziness, you may even collapse depending on how severe the virus is. Whatever the virus, you should not be made to pay for a meal that caused you this unpleasantness.

ITV host Jim Rosenthal has taken chef Heston Blumenthal to court over a £1,300 meal which he claimed left him sick. The ITV presenter, who is well known for fronting the channel’s coverage of football and motor racing, was one of more than 500 guests who fell ill during the norovirus outbreak at the aware-winning Fat Duck last year.

District Judge Tim Parket initially said he was minded to dismiss Rosenthal’s claim at Oxford County Court after hearing he and his dinner companions had already received £6,000 compensation for pain suffered in the wake of that meal. However, after a successful legal argument from Rosenthal’s lawyer, the judge decided the battle for compensation would carry on into round two.
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With the dark night’s drawing in, it is important that all teenagers are aware of the dangers when out on the streets at night. This comes after a car ploughed into a group of ten teenagers when walking on a country road late at night.

The accident that left a 13-year-old girl brain damaged should come as a warning to both drivers and pedestrians, especially younger ones. Barry Buckley, 22, was in court regarding the accident where he drove into the group of teenagers. He was fined £250 and given a 12-month driving ban.

The court heard that Paige was one of ten teenagers walking along an unlit country lane without pavements at around midnight. The group was not in single file and was wearing dark clothing. This is what the prosecution argued at the trail that went ahead at Derby Crown Court. Buckley denied dangerous driving but admitted driving without due care and attention.
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Seven people were injured when an industrial sized coffee machine exploded inside a supermarket cafe. Shoppers and staff were sent diving to the floor after the powerful blast ripped through the Sainsbury’s branch at lunchtime. Emergency crews from the police, fire and ambulance services rushed to the scene and six people were taken to hospital, some suffering from head injuries.

The store, in Famborough, Hants, was also evacuated while fire fighters dealt with the incident and paramedics treated the injured. A Health and Safety Executive investigation was expected to be launched today, to why the large drinks machine exploded. The incident happened yesterday lunch time, as shoppers sat down to eat their lunch at the supermarket. Six victims, including both staff members and customers, were taken to Frimley Park Hospital.
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For some drivers the motorway is what they fear most. The thought of vehicles reaching speeds of up to 70mph is enough for them to opt out of driving altogether. With large vehicles such as Vans and Lorries drivers often feel like they are on a high-speed sandwich. If the thought of that wasn’t enough to put you off, the latest investigation from the Daily Mail is sure to.

The Daily Mail set up a camera for an hour on the M25 to catch drivers behaving badly. They said in their report that it created a whole new meaning to ‘breakfast on the go’. The camera caught 14 drivers breaking the law in the space of an hour.

One of the 14 was a man caught tucking into a bowl of cereal as he was driving along the busy motorway. The paper photographed drivers eating, drinking, texting and even nodding off. One man was even pictured fully unclothed as it appeared he was getting changed, whilst the driver of the vehicle was enjoying his cigarette. These mischievous drivers were all caught yesterday on a stretch of the M25 near South Mimms, Hertfordshire.
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