Former NFL professional athletes across the country have filed more than 80 lawsuits seeking damages for brain injuries suffered on the playing field. All those lawsuits have now been consolidated into one. The common, central message that all the ex-athletes are asserting is that the NFL concealed from them the fact that head trauma suffered during football games frequently leads to brain injuries that are severe and permanent.

The players believe that as a consequence, the NFL should be compelled to provide compensation and expenses for those currently suffering from debilitating neurological conditions, including Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. They also argue that even those who are currently not experiencing such mental difficulties have cause for concern about their future health, and therefore are in dire need of systematic medical monitoring to be paid for by the NFL.

The plaintiffs feel that the NFL glorified the violent aspects of the game while minimizing the risks of concussions and other head traumas caused by repetitive blows to the skull. They say that the league, content to profit from the physical punishment meted out to players, was extremely lax by failing to give them warnings and known information about risks, or to impose safety rules that might have saved some players' brains from cognitive disarray.

An auto accident can be a truly devastating experience. While minor fender benders might be little more than a small inconvenience, a severe crash can be life changing, and even deadly. Victims often lose weeks or months from their lives, and the consequences of an accident can affect the quality of their life circumstances for years to come.

Car accidents tend to occur most often at intersections, i.e. spots where two or more roads going in different directions cross one another. This is because intersections are places where cars can be heading directly toward one another, and the potential for conflict during activities such as turning left or right, or crossing lanes is high.

Efforts are now being made to study intersections, especially in areas that seem to be accident-prone. The National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey collects data, information and statistics related to accidents and crash scenes. As time goes by, patterns and tendencies related to accidents are gradually being identified. The goal of data collection is to be able to determine the factors that tend to contribute most to the occurrence of auto accidents so that more accidents can be avoided and the number of serious injuries and fatal intersection accidents lessened.

The accident data collected tends to focus on these main factors

• Gender and age of driver
• Traffic control device at the intersection
• Driver distractions
• Traffic violations by drivers

If you have been injured in an intersection-related car accident, you may be entitled to compensation. Speak to a San Jose personal injury attorney to learn more about your legal options.

Regular readers of this blog know that car accidents are a common theme. They cause injury or death to thousands of people each year across the state of California, just as they do in other states. But they aren't the only danger on the roads to pedestrians. In March of this year, a pedestrian suffered a fatal brain injury when a bicyclist ran into him.

The 71-year-old San Francisco man was walking east along Castro Street when he entered a crosswalk. Just then a bicyclist heading south entered the intersection and ran into the man, knocking him down. Both the pedestrian and the bicyclist were taken to a hospital, where the pedestrian's condition quickly deteriorated. He developed pneumonia and breathing problems, finally succumbing to his injuries four days later.

The bicyclist was treated and released from the hospital. Later that day, someone using the bicyclist's name posted a message about the collision in an online forum for a local cycling group. The poster said the stoplight had turned yellow just as he was approaching the intersection, "but I was already way too committed to stop."

There are few more difficult situations for accident victims and their families than a hit-and-run crash. Not knowing who harmed you or a loved one can be excruciating, especially when it comes to paying for the resulting medical bills -- or, in the case of death, the funeral and associated costs.

Two San Jose, California, parents have endured this agony for the past 16 months, ever since their teenage daughter was critically injured by a hit-and-run driver. A traumatic brain injury has left her in a coma since the accident and although she's shown some slight improvement, her parents describe her recovery as a waiting game.

The accident happened in January 2011 as the girl, then 15, and her boyfriend were walking home from a party one night. As they were crossing a street a black SUV hit her and left the scene without stopping. Police have vigorously investigated, but they admit they have little to go on beyond a grainy surveillance video from a nearby store.

One of the many devastating outcomes possible in an accident is a traumatic brain injury. Such injuries are highly complex, and people who experience a blow to the head, whether in an auto collision, a fall or some other type of accident, often have symptoms that present themselves in unpredictable ways.

One common effect of a brain injury is the inability to make decisions, particularly immediately after the injury occurs. This can be especially harmful, considering the complex medical choices that need to be made as the victim is recovering. Usually the more severe the injury is, the more difficult it is to make decisions. These might include the choice of rehabilitation programming or what type of psychiatric treatment a patient needs, which could have an impact on the rest of his or her life.

Researchers with the University of Alabama at Birmingham have been studying these effects more closely to help TBI victims and their families make decisions about patient care. Using a group of 86 patients, the researchers divided the group according to injury severity: mild, complicated mild and moderate-severe. One month after injury, the patients' ability to make complex medical decisions was mostly intact for those with mild TBI, but still quite impaired for the more severely injured subjects. This was especially true when it came to the aspects of appreciation, reasoning and understanding in decision making.