With accident rates soaring on some roads in the state's bustling oil fields, the TxDOT is stepping up efforts to lower speed limits on particularly dangerous routes. Under a recently adopted emergency rule change, the agency can decide in four weeks to reduce speed limits by up to 12 miles per hour...
Chairman of Texas Transportation Commission request Inquiry into Surging Traffic Wrecks
Ted Houghton, chairman of the state Transportation Commission, has called on Texas officials to address motor vehicle deaths and multiple-fatality crashes involving trucks and other commercial vehicles that have accompanied the state's oil and natural gas boom since 2008. His remarks came in response to an investigation by the Houston Chronicle and...
Fracking & Hydraulic Drilling Have Brought a Spike in Fatal Trucking Accidents in Texas
For six decades, highway deaths have dropped steadily all across the US, but in Texas all motor vehicle fatalities - and accidents involving commercial trucks - have turned back upward since the state's oil drilling and fracking boom began in 2008. In fact, consistently since then, Texas has led all states in...
Truck accidents surge: Why no national outcry?
Fatal truck accidents like the one that killed Dan Lindner's family are all too common—happening nearly 11 times every single day in this country on average, and killing nearly 4,000 people each year, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
On top of that, more than 100,000 people...
Texting Bans Work: Cutting Teen Traffic Deaths by 11%, Study Finds
Texting bans can reduce teen traffic fatalities by as much as 11 percent, according to a new study of the effect of such state laws. Not all texting bans are alike, of course. But ones aimed at teens and that allow primary enforcement of the law — i.e. they don’t require officers...
Cade Browning named Abilene’s Only Texas Rising Star Super Lawyer
For the fifth time, Cade Browning of Browning Law Firm, PLLC has been selected for inclusion in the “Texas Super Lawyers–Rising Stars Edition 2014” in the April 2014 issue of Texas Monthly magazine in the field of Civil Litigation.
Rising Stars are described as "outstanding lawyers who have demonstrated superior professional potential."...
Loving County Gas Explosion kills two and injures nine
A build-up of gas because of an unclosed valve may have led to the explosion that killed two workers near Orla in Loving County on April 30, 2014.
As the LA Times reported:
"Two oil well workers died and nine suffered minor cuts and bruises...
Traffic Fatalities Still on the Rise in West Texas as Drilling Surges
According to the Texas Department of Transportation, the oil-booming Permian Basin saw a 13 percent increase in roadside deaths from 2012-2013. Last week, a victims’ rights coalition in Midland held a panel discussion on how to deal with the region’s increasingly dangerous roads. Organizers of the event say most of those wrecks...
The importance of the civil justice system
People often forget the importance of the civil justice system in our country. If you haven’t seen the commentary on the importance of the civil justice system by CNN’s Michael Smerconish, it’s a must see.
Access the commentary here: http://cnn.it/PANBkR
Forrest Bowers of Lubbock named a Texas Legal Legend
Forrest Bowers, who flew a P-51 fighter plane over Japan in World War II and then became a lawyer in Brownfield and Lubbock, was named a Texas Legal Legend on Tuesday, April 1, by the Litigation Section of the State Bar of Texas. It is a well deserved honor for a true...
