Drunk Driver Accident related Injury & Death

According to the Center for Disease Control:

"Every day, 36 people in the United States die, and approximately 700 more are injured, in motor vehicle crashes that involve an alcohol-impaired driver. The annual cost of alcohol-related crashes totals more than $51 billion. But there are effective measures that can help prevent injuries and deaths from alcohol-impaired driving."

Continue Reading at the CDC: Impaired Driving

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Dangers of leaving infants in safety seats

Infants shouldn't be left alone to sleep in most car safety seats, a recent article warns.

While car safety seats are vital in protecting young children in Orlando car accidents, some infants are at risk of oxygen de-saturation and apnoea (temporary suspension of breathing) while they are restrained in reclining infant car seats. While this may only affect a small percentage of infants, it is worth guarding against to protect your child.

You can read the full article here:

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Text message ban in CA

California recently passed a law that will ban text messaging by all drivers effective 1/9/09. They will become the 7th state in the country to do so. We think this will have a major impact on accidents and fatalities Hopefully Florida will follow suit as texting has become an increasing cause of car accidents in Orlando in recent years. Check out the article at: www.iihs.org.

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Do Red Light Cameras Really Work?

We found a great article on the effectiveness of red light cameras. There have been a glut of scientific-based studies of late about the benefits of the cameras at avoiding car accidents. These have begun to be used in Orlando to avoid car accidents. The insurance institute for highway safety, however, has found evidence to dispute the findings of the studies.

Check out the article at: www.iihs.org

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Drinking age relation to accidents

Protecting teens from the dangers of alcohol use and abuse:
wishful thinking versus science

Convened by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, American Medical Association, National Transportation Safety Board, and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety to support 21 minimum drinking age

Presentation by Adrian Lund, IIHS president

October 9, 2007 • Washington, DC

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In 1972, at a conference on road safety in Canberra, Australia, William Haddon Jr., M.D., the first head of what is now the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and President of IIHS from 1969-1985, talked about the beginning of a transition

"away from a pre-scientific period. That is, from a period in which folk culture has dominated — in which virtually everyone, both in and out of public life, has been a self-certified expert with his own pet, dogmatically advanced panacea — in which the notion has been virtually absent that public and private conclusions, pronouncements and measures to reduce the losses should be based on well-done, carefully scientific determinations of relevance and efficacy rather than on the unsubstantiated assertions of some individual or group."

We are here today because this transition to science-based approaches to reducing the deaths and injuries from motor vehicle crashes is not yet complete. Thirty-five years later, John M. McCardell, Jr. has mounted a campaign to reduce the drinking age from 21 to 18 in the United States. His justification — a desire to reduce the clandestine and sometimes biologically dangerous levels of alcohol consumption among 18-20 year-olds — is laudable. However, his reasoning about what works is quintessentially pre-scientific. Highway safety policies need to be grounded in solid research, not wishful thinking. His arguments are demonstrably wrong. My comments today are limited to his two central theses:

• that the benefits of the 21-year-old drinking age are unproven; and
• that alcohol education for teens promises to be more effective in dealing with the problem of teen alcohol use and abuse.

Both theses are contradicted by fact.

Teen crashes vary with drinking age laws

On his website, Mr. McCardell says, "Advocates of the 21-year-old drinking age have long argued that the decrease in fatalities was a result of the lowered drinking age but cannot offer a cause and effect relationship."

That view ignores 30 years of research.

Status Report, April 9, 1974

Status Report, July 15, 1981

Status Report, July 15, 1981

The truth is, the cause and effect are clear. lf we lower the drinking age, we will be killing more teens on the highway. Actions among the states in lowering, raising, lowering, and raising again the age at which it is legal to purchase alcohol have to evaluate the effects of these changes on motor vehicle crashes.

In the 1960s and 70s, in the context of the Vietnam war and lowering the voting age to 18, many states also lowered the drinking age from 21 to 18.

History of US minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) laws

IIHS's first study in 1974 looked at two states and one Canadian province that lowered the drinking age, carefully comparing their experience to that of adjacent states that did not change. That study showed that the number of 15-20 year-olds involved in fatal crashes increased in the jurisdictions that lowered the drinking age.

Subsequently, in the late 1970s, states began to increase drinking ages again. Again, it was possible to compare states that made this change to states that didn't. Again, we saw a change related to the drinking age — this time, fatal crash rates declined as teen drinking and teen drinking and driving declined.

IIHS has been a leader in studying the effect of drinking age, but it hasn't been alone.

The CDC identified many more strong, empirical studies examining the effects of either raising or lowering the minimum drinking age.

CDC review of evidence regarding interventions to reduce alcohol-impaired driving
Shults et al., 2001

Although there's variation the effects are consistent: deaths go up when the drinking age is lowered and they go down when it is raised. The 21-year-old drinking age is saving lives.

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This is a good article you can read the rest at www.iihs.org

Keep the kids away from your liquor cabinet!

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