Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:
NHTSA celebrates its 40th Anniversary of EMS Week with a Selfie message from its EMS Director Drew Dawson.
See http://ems.gov/newsletter/aprilmay2014/letter_from_director.htm#
Drew joined NHTSA over a decade ago from many years with Montana EMS. When he arrived at NHTSA a decade ago, I thought I would show him the possibilities of saving the lives of more crash victims with new technologies of Automatic Crash Notification (ACN) and URGENCY software to improve timely, optimal emergency medical care.
I showed him a map of crash deaths by location in the State of Montana thinking he would be delighted as to how we could do better saving lives with instant notification of serious crashes along with URGENCY information on the calculated probability of a serious injury being present.
I was shocked by his reaction. He became visibly upset and said those people were DRT’s!
I had not heard that term before so I asked what it meant. He said DEAD RIGHT THERE!
I returned to my office dismayed but determined to continue research on ACN & URGENCY without his support.
One can see how many Americans have died in crashes in Montana and every other State for the years 2002 – 2011 at
Montana totals now approach nearly 3,000 crash deaths. National totals to date now exceed 400,000 crash deaths. See http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811754AR.pdf
What a legacy!
NHTSA certainly could have done better — much better.
Sorry I was not able to do better.
