Internet Marketing

The need for government to balance the budget at every level is starting to bite. While Washington struggles to cut a few trillion off the federal budgets without raising taxes or cutting entitlements (it will be a good trick when someone works out how to do it), state and local governments face each new day without enough money to pay all their bills. This has been forcing lay-offs, cuts in pensions and other benefits, and a reduction in the quality of services provided local taxpayers. The pain is being felt all round the country. So what’s a local government to do when it’s supposed to keep providing services but it’s not sure whether there’s enough money to pay the bills. For example, fire departments have to keep their equipment in a constant state of readiness with enough people to send out to actually fight the fires. Local residents would not be pleased if their calls for emergency assistance were met with the reply the pumper had broken down. Men were being sent with buckets.

So to help pay all the bills, many local governments have hit on the idea of charging those involved in traffic accidents for all the assistance they receive. So, if you have the misfortune to find the metal of your vehicle round you like Christmas wrapping, you will be relieved when you hear the police, fire department and ambulance roaring to your rescue. Relieved, that is, until you realize you are being billed by the hour for all these rescue services. This is a rental for the benefit of all the transport bringing the cutting equipment and staff to operate it, plus the paramedics to stabilize your condition until you can be extracted, and law enforcement officers to control traffic and keep spectators away. When you get the bill, you will understand just how expensive it is to hire all these people to save you. There’s a moment of panic and then you smile. That lasts for another minute as uncertainty gnaws away at your confidence. Does your insurance company pay all these bills?

At this point, we come to a point of considerable controversy. With some consistency, the insurers argue these are services for the benefit of the public and paid for out of tax revenue. As such, the local and state governments are not entitled to charge for the services. Put simply, the insurers refuse to pay. This sends the bill collectors to your door. It’s at this point you come to appreciate how vulnerable you are to extortion. The bill collectors make a simple threat. We say you owe this money. Here’s a copy of the city ordinance or state law. If you fail to pay within seven days, we will report you in default and that will wreck your credit score. Read the rest of this entry »

The problem can be stated simply. If you take your eyes off the road, you will not see the other vehicle coming toward you. This makes you a danger to other road users. The group most likely to fall into this trap are young drivers. Not only are they the least experienced behind the wheel. They are also the ones with the most peer pressure to reply to the text message or answer the cell phone call immediately. The evidence cannot be more clear. Looking at all the different ways in which teens die through disease and accidents, crashes in motor-vehicles are the leading cause of death. The government estimates that, in 2009, about 5,500 people were killed and more than half-a-million injured because one of the drivers was distracted.

In a perfect world, this would be resolved by a discussion at home. As a parent, you would sit down with your children and explain the risks. The statistics are available on the internet to back up your warnings. Your children would nod their heads wisely and swear by all they hold holy not to continue this dangerous practice. Except this would not work in most families. What teens say to their parents is not how they act when they are outside the home. So now comes the hard choice. Do you sit back and rely on prayer every time they drive off into the wild blue yonder, or do you take positive steps? First, a little law: it’s a criminal offense to operate any transmitter that will block or jam wireless communications. So you would face big fines if you were found jamming mobile phone signals. But it’s probably not an offense if you instal equipment in your vehicle that acts as a passive block to the signal. The reason for the distinction is that if you created a cone of silence around your vehicle by transmitting a signal to jam all the cell towers, you would cut off all the other users in your area. While this might make the roads safer, it would seriously inconvenience everyone else. More importantly, it might interfere with emergency calls for the police and ambulance. So passive shielding is probably legal because it does not interfere with any other vehicle or person on the sidewalk. Taking this simple step means you no longer have trust issues with your teen (until he or she works out how to turn it off or get round the shielding, e.g. by putting an antenna outside the vehicle). Read the rest of this entry »

Well, it’s that time of year again. We’ve got Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November and we’ve no sooner recovered from that when Christmas is upon us. And for those still alive, there’s a further opportunity to celebrate come New Year. Indeed, statistics show we drink more over the next few weeks than at any other time during during the year. Sure, there are cookouts when a few friends come around and drink some beer, but this is the season of good cheer and, often, excessive alcohol consumption. So welcome to the developing world of social host liability. Let’s suppose it’s obvious one of your party guests is seriously intoxicated, but you continue to supply more alcohol and fail to stop this person attempting to drive home. Once on the highway, this driver is involved in a traffic accident and seriously injures other people.

Under the law of negligence, you are liable if it’s foreseeable a drunk may drive and injure a third party. This area of liability started off under the Dram Shop Acts that made bartenders liable if drunken customers injured people on the way home. Courts have extended the liability from commercial sellers to social hosts who give the alcohol away. Either way, the driver is allowed to leave and presents a high risk to the general public. Let’s start off in New Jersey where a social host served a guest thirteen drinks in a hour and allowed him to drive away. Minutes later, he was involved in a head-on collision. The host was held liable. In 1986, the New Jersey lawmakers reduced the liability a little. If the blood-alcohol content is below .15, the host is exempted from liability.

The experience in New Jersey represents a general pattern of the courts trying to extend the usual principles of negligence to social hosts and the lawmakers fighting back, as in California, Iowa, Minnesota and Oregon. But the common law continues to represent a general threat to social hosts who knowingly allow their guests to continue drinking and then drive away. Read the rest of this entry »