We’re speaking of giant pharmaceutical corporations which inflict untold damage on innocent Americans via defective drugs. These legal products profit them by billions of dollars before they are hit with damages of only millions of dollars.

For them, it’s a trade-off — and all about profits. They often know their product is dangerous to many people, yet market and sell it anyway so they can make unspeakable profits while innocent Americans die.

Some of the worst instances lately have included the antidepressant Paxil, produced by British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, or GSK. Paxil has been proven to cause birth defects in the infants of women who took the defective drug during pregnancy — defects which can include ailments of the brain, heart, lungs and other vital organs. These injuries can necessitate surgery, or even repeated surgeries, to attempt to correct.

GSK has reaped billions of dollars in profits on the backs of Americans who unsuspectingly take its defective drug Paxil. In fact, in 2008 alone GSK made $1.2 billion in profits off Paxil, though that was just 2 per cent of its total profits for that year.

Another dangerously defective drug is Accutane, laced with Isotretinoin. Created by Roche, a pharmaceutical giant based in Switzerland, this acne medication — which only should be used as a last resort — may help ease blemishes, but it can cause serious injuries. These can include IBDs, or inflammatory bowel diseases, known as Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s Disease. Both are lifelong and debilitating, often mandating major surgery to address.

The list goes on and on, as Americans increasingly are conditioned by marketers and in some cases even their own physicians to think that a pill can solve everything — when in truth, that pill may come with a very high price tag, sometimes even costing your own life.

But Americans don’t have to take such punishment without a fight. Instead, they can engage a skilled and experienced defective drug lawyer or attorney for any of the 50 states to press a defective drug lawsuit. Just submit the free case evaluation form on this website and a legal representative will respond promptly to help you assess your defective drug injury case.

Yet.

That’s the key word in the equation — “yet.” But not having had a cell phone accident — yet –  doesn’t mean distracted driving won’t cause one. In fact, distractions can be fatal. Just ask families of the 6,000 Americans killed in distracted driving car crash accidents per year, or the half a million persons injured.

Or ask the New York air traffic controller who was found to be making a personal call while juggling flight routes, and the distraction proved fatal. The controller was talking with a friend on a headset when crucial errors occurred, and as a result, a plane collided with a tour helicopter over the Hudson River and nine people died.

The same thing happens on our roads every day. But it didn’t use to — not like now. For decades, millions of Americans made phone calls when it was prudent and time to do so. They didn’t interrupt a delightful dinner to field a needless call about what their kid was watching on TV. They didn’t drive with one hand on the wheel while they dialed a neighbor to ask if it was trash night. And they didn’t do their jobs while keeping one ear on a cell phone and half their thoughts on their duty.

But now, Americans are addicted to cell phones just as surely as junkies are hooked on drugs. They call and talk endlessly, which means the things they’re supposed to be doing otherwise — such as driving a car or supervising air traffic, both of which are vital tasks where inattention can mean death — get neglected.

How many deaths, and how many tragedies, will it take for a nation to wake up and recognize the enormously serious problem in its midst? Needless multi-tasking isn’t worth the risk to you, your loved ones or other people on the roads, or in the air. Some things need our full attention. But too many such things aren’t getting it.

We get it at USA Legal Help Center, and we’ll help if you or a family member suffers harm due to a driver’s negligence and driving distractions.

Meanwhile, ask yourself: How many phone calls have you ever made which were life-or-death matters? Chances are it’s been zero. So don’t turn a routine call into a life-or-death car accident. Hang up and drive.

Large trucks have caused many of those lately, including four deaths in a horrific Phoenix, AZ crash when a dump truck driver — who admits he was doing paperwork while driving — slammed into nine motorcycles which had stopped at a red light. Just days earlier, an 18 wheeler in Kentucky careened into a van, killing 11 members of a church.

Also recently, a trucker crashed into a woman’s car when its driver was watching streaming pornography on a laptop computer; a big rig sparked a 50-car pileup in Wyoming; a tractor trailer ran into the rear of a Greyhound Bus in Bowling Green, KY; and a truck smashed into the back of a van in Indiana.

As with car wrecks, the cause of many of these large truck accidents may have been driver distractions, from paperwork and laptops to cell phones and texts. An 80,000 pound truck traveling at 70 miles per hour can go the length of a football field in the time it takes its driver to read a text, and even then such huge vehicles need more time and space to stop than smaller, lighter cars. It’s called physics.

In short, drivers of diesel trucks, tractor trailers, big rigs, semi trucks and 18 wheelers bear a larger responsibility on our roads, due to their larger vehicles which cause such greater damage. Indeed, while only 3 per cent of vehicles on America’s roads are big rigs, they are involved in far more traffic accident fatalities: 12 per cent of those nationally, 10 per cent of those in Illinois, and 15 per cent of those in Missouri.

Long-haul truck drivers also may not get enough sleep, and when they do sleep, they may suffer from a condition called sleep apnea. Such sleep disruption makes them more tired when they’re behind the wheel.

Anything which reduces a trucker’s awareness and alertness for even a second can cause a truck crash that kills and injures horribly. No mere diversion is worth that. Truckers must hold themselves accountable for driving with greater caution, because too many lives are at stake.

If you or a loved one has been harmed by a diesel truck driver or other big rig drivers, alert a semi truck accident lawyer or tractor trailer accident lawyer with USALegalHelpCenter.com. We can provide you with an 18 wheeler accident lawyer or diesel truck accident lawyer in any of America’s 50 states.

U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said as much this week when he revealed that it took considerable pressure from the government before Toyota would recall millions of cars in order to fix their gas pedals.

Because Toyota dragged its corporate feet, many Americans have died in horrific car crash accidents, when their vehicle suddenly sped up and they couldn’t slow it down. Such victims’ survivors now face a life of anguish, but they’re making their voices heard by launching lawsuits against Toyota for its manufacturing negligence.

Such lawsuits should seek punitive damages as well as compensatory damages, since  Toyota should be punished for its outrageous indifference to public safety. The manufacturer seemed willing to pay victims and survivors settlements as part of the price of doing business. Fortunately, that wasn’t enough for the federal government, whose intervention led to the enormous recall of 2.3 million vehicles in America to fix accelerator pedals which might stick.

If you or a loved one has been injured due to a defective Toyota product, let a defective product lawyer or car accident lawyer with USALegalHelpCenter.com go to work for you. He or she will fight for your rights to fitting and fair financial compensation for medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering.

Toyota sent a message to American consumers with its early disregard of its stuck gas pedal crisis. Now send a message to Toyota that such callous indifference to public safety will not be tolerated in the U.S. legal system.

According to the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), affiliated with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), no reduction in crashes occurred in New York, Connecticut, California and Washington, D.C. after bans on drivers using handheld cell phones took effect. This was based on assessing insurance claims for car crash damages.

Why? That’s a good question, since the link between cell phones and traffic deaths has been clearly established. One conclusion could be that fewer drivers in those states chose to heed the law and continued texting and talking, anyway.

Another possibility is that drivers who’d used handheld phones changed to bluetooth devices or other hands-free phones. Research shows that those phones also involve dangerous driver distractions. So, states changing the law and then drivers changing phones didn’t help.

Answers may be elusive, but they will come — and they must come, because Americans are being slaughtered by those who think driving a heavy vehicle in heavy traffic isn’t important enough when they want to divert themselves by phoning or texting inconsequential messages to friends.

All laws which seek to restrict if not outlaw such driving distractions and cell phone accidents are basically common sense laws. And they aren’t meant to punish, but to protect. After all, every person who drives also has hours each day when they aren’t driving, and those hours are the times to make phone calls, send text messages or surf the Web. Looking away even for a moment while traffic whizzes by is not the right time. It’s the potentially fatal time.

Such laws and their results will bear watching in the years ahead, as American comes to terms with cell phone fixations — even  addictions — of so many citizens. But flatline results in three states do not mean we should back off and cede the progress already made. They only mean we should re-examine our efforts and work harder. The payoff — in spared lives and in whole families — is certainly worth it.

USA Legal Help Center.com supports victims of distracted driving car crash accidents. A cell phone accident lawyer can seek financial compensation in a cell phone accident lawsuit or distracted driver lawsuit.

That may be because they accept a quick cash settlement from their employer that’s not nearly enough. It also may be because they rely on Workers Compensation benefits, which can be marginal.

A far better source of recovery can be gained under the Jones Act, a law passed in 1920 to protect the rights of American seamen. The Jones Act provides more far-ranging recovery to seamen who are injured on the job, or to their survivors if they are killed.

Financial recovery should be pursued under the Jones Act if a seaman was injured due to unseaworthiness of a vessel or due to negligence on the part of his employer or fellow crew members, for whom the employer is responsible.

If you or a loved one is such an injured seaman, and you still aren’t sure about your eligibility or strategies for recovery, alert an experienced and knowledgeable Jones Act lawyer or attorney, or a maritime accident injury lawyer or attorney, with USA Legal Help Center.

Legal help can be supplied to seamen from all 50 states for injuries suffered on American waters. Simply fill out the free case review form on this Web page, and a USA Legal Help Center representative will respond to you shortly.

Indeed, drunk driving accidents have killed more than half a million Americans since 1982. That’s more Americans than have been killed by foreign enemies in all wars since and including World War II.

Even if you drive defensively, you can be struck by a drunk driver, who may speed through a red light at an intersection and hit you broadside, or may speed heedlessly toward cars stopped at a stop sign and then rear-end them catastrophically.

But there are some things you can do to increase your odds of avoiding such a drunk driving accident collision. One is to avoid driving, if at all possible, in the early morning hours after midnight, when most drunk driving accidents occur. Another is to drive less on weekends than on weekdays, since weekends have a larger number of drunk driving accidents. And another is to support all laws and efforts to enhance public safety by clamping down on drunk drivers.

If, however, you or a loved one suffers harm due to a drunk driver, it’s not too late to protect yourself in another way. That is, you can ensure your legal rights are safeguarded by an experienced and knowledgeable drunk driving accident lawyer or attorney with USA Legal Help Center.com.

USA Legal Help Center can provide you with a car accident lawyer or attorney for all 50 states in the USA. This lawyer can grapple with insurance companies who try to deny, delay or underpay what they rightly owe after a drunk driver has caused losses. Your USA drunk driving attorney also can battle in the legal arena to gain full and fair financial compensation for your losses, such as lost wages, mounting medical bills and pain and suffering.

Contact USA Legal Help Center today, and launch the process of seeking a cash award for your suffering caused by a drunk driver. Just fill out the brief free case evaluation form on this web page, and a legal representative will respond shortly to help you assess your case.

Since it’s not enough to say “Hang up and drive” and expect everyone to do it, anymore than it’s not enough to say “Just say no” to drugs and expect everyone to do it, states are passing laws to, in effect, legislate common sense. Up to 18 states and the District of Columbia now have laws on the books making texting while driving illegal.

Some will say this can’t do any good, since it will be difficult if not impossible for law officers to discern if drivers are texting while driving. But the same argument was made regarding seat belt laws, and those have helped save many thousands of lives. Besides, texts and cell calls leave an electronic trail, including times. It wouldn’t be that hard to determine if a driver was using his or her phone at the precise time of an accident.

The trucking industry thinks it should be above such laws and not have to obey. It argues that truckers use computers in their vehicles to stay in touch with fleet managers and so forth. But that’s no excuse. Taking your eyes off the road even for a second can be just the wrong second, leading to a horrendous semi truck accident. And besides, idle checking of computer screens is probably the indulgence of many truck drivers, not sending or receiving crucial information.

All of us who use America’s roads have a responsibility — to ourselves and to each other — to make driving safety our chief priority. When chatting endlessly to a friend or texting a colleague becomes the priority instead, tragedy can ensue. That’s not an opinion — it’s a fact. So yes, hang up and drive. But do so because you know and understand how important it is, not just because you were told to do so.

In fact, it’s alarming news, because if women drinkers become as dangerous on our roads and highways as men, then America’s carnage from drunk driving accidents is going to get far, far worse. And it’s bad enough already, with about 16,000 drunk driving deaths per year.

Here’s the latest DUI news on which to chew: The U.S. Department of Transportation reports that the number of women arrested for drunk driving has jumped almost 30 per cent in the past decade. That’s not a statistical aberration — that’s a huge chunk. And it’s getting worse.

Why? Societal changes play a part. More men are unemployed today, and more women may feel the stress and pressure to bring home the bacon — as well as cart the kids from school to the doctor to the mall to home. Such stress and pressure might be relieved with a drink — maybe one drink — but for many people, one is never enough, and inebriation ensues — which becomes especially dangerous when they drive a heavy vehicle at high speeds through complex traffic patterns while making cell calls.

The DOT says 10 states have had an increase in impaired women in fatal wrecks: Wyoming, New Hampshire, Ohio, Montana, Indiana, Washington, Kansas, Tennessee, Nevada and West Virginia.

Yes, men remain the big DUI problem. But though male DUI arrests still outnumber female DUI arrests by almost four-to-one, a decade ago the ratio was almost six-to-one.

In fact, male DUI arrests have actually dropped by 50,000 per year in the past decade. In the same time, female DUI arrests have increased by 36,000 per year.

No one wants to be a statistic, but such numbers don’t lie — and can be illuminating. It’s time for all Americans to take stock of their lives and those of their loved ones and realize that anyone, at any time, can cause a life-changing if not life-ending car accident because they drove while intoxicated. USA-LegalHelpCenter.com takes that very seriously, and we hope you do too.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, on behalf of President Obama, is calling for a national summit of safety experts to address the explosion of irresponsible driving that’s accompanied the invention of cell phones and texting. Millions of Americans talk by cell and send texts while driving, and many of them have killed their fellow Americans in the process.

So far, 17 states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws making texting while driving illegal. Congress also is mulling legislation which would cut states’ highway funding by 25 per cent if they failed to pass such laws.

Meanwhile, the car carnage continues, from the horror of an individual’s accident, as when an Illinois teen died in June when she drove off the road during a text, to the grim horror of the California commuter train which crashed and killed 25 people — all because the inattentive train operator was texting.

Since common sense isn’t preventing this national nightmare, laws must intervene. Of course, some say such laws can’t matter, since it’s difficult to enforce a ban on texting while driving when it’s hard to observe outside the car. But naysayers once said seatbelt laws wouldn’t work for the same reason, and today’s widespread adherence to seatbelts has saved thousands–perhaps millions–of lives.

Study after study has demonstrated that texting while driving severely hampers a person’s driving ability. In fact, studies by Car and Driver Magazine, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and others show that texters drive as badly as persons who are legally drunk.

Beyond legislation, it’s vital that educational efforts also help stem the tide. If anything, vast numbers of Americans simply need a wakeup call about an obvious and vast problem which their texting fixation ignores.

But if it’s too late for your or a loved one, and you’ve been harmed by a texting driver in a traffic accident, fight back in the legal realm by claiming financial compensation for your loss.

Alert a cell phone accidents lawyer or car accidents lawyer today with USA-LegalHelpCenter.com, and get experienced legal support on your side.

USA-LegalHelpCenter.com can provide you with the lawyer or attorney you need for your personal injury concerns in all 50 states of the USA. Simply fill out and submit the free case evaluation form on this Web page and a legal representative will respond promptly to explore your case.

And don’t worry: Our staff won’t be driving or otherwise multi-tasking when they call you, but will give you their full attention.