Calling for an End to Crash Drowning Deaths

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

A tragic Crash Drowning Death was in the news recently.

An article I submitted pro bono to Legal Reader has now been published.

Please see

https://www.legalreader.com/end-the-tragedy-of-crash-drowning-deaths/
Hopefully we can help make progress in ending such tragedies.

Lou

Consumer Reports Puts Your Safety First

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

Legal Reader has kindly published an article that I submitted pro bono on this life saving initiative by Consumer Reports.

See https://www.legalreader.com/putting-your-safety-first-consumer-reports-calls-for-federal-standard-for-acn/

Having worked on the life saving technology of Automatic Crash Notification (ACN) since the early 1990s it is gratifying to see Consumer Reports launch this initiative.

In response to Consumer Reports’ call for public support I wrote this article that lays out some of the history of the enormous number of tragedies since 1982 that now exceed the number of lives lost in all U. S. Wars.

I document what NHTSA knew, when they knew it, as NHTSA counted more than 1,600,000 fatalities since 1982.

Please help Consumer Reports succeed in this life saving effort to get NHTSA to promulgate an ACN Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard.

Lou

Consumer Reports Advocates for Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard for Automatic Crash Notification + Urgency Crash Data to Save Lives

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

Consumer Reports has launched a safety initiative with huge life saving potential. 

The need for such information on the crash to save lives was impressed upon me in the 1990’s.  

After working for more than a decade to help get airbag crash protection into cars, I was managing a NHTSA project in which we were investigating crashes, injuries, medical treatments, and outcomes at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami Florida.   

Our second crash (case #91-002) was a horrendous 55 mph Delta V, multiple impact, crash of a 1991 Volvo with airbags.   

The driver was not belted and the fatal internal injuries were “occult” i.e. not obviously reflective of the crash severity which only became clear after a full crash investigation had been performed.  See

https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/940714.1.1.pdf

This crash gave NHTSA the insights that airbags were giving the emergency medical community a different, more subtle, set of injury indicators known as occult injuries.

See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/home/occult-injury-database-studies/

In the late 1990s, under the leadership of Administrator Ricardo Martinez and later Administrator Jeffrey W. Runge, both Emergency Physicians, NHTSA created the Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN) program which aimed at improving all aspects of auto safety.  See two NHTSA reports that I worked on

CIREN Report 1

CIREN Report 2

When I was handing out the final Report one morning to the Principal Investigator from the Michigan CIREN Center before anyone else had arrived, I remarked “Wouldn’t it be great if we had a CIREN Center in each of the 50 States?”  His answer made the hair on my neck feel the chill of death.  He emphatically said “I don’t want that.”

Since he was well funded by the auto companies, that was the beginning of the end of the CIREN program.

So if we are to make safety progress with automatic crash notification and Urgency software it will take more than I have been able to achieve.

There are millions of reasons the American people need Consumer Reports’ efforts now to help people get the timely and optimal protection from crash injuries they need to reduce mortality, morbidity and tragic consequences of their crashes.

I have tried to quantify some of these reasons using historical NHTSA data on more than a million crash deaths and DOT Policy guidance on dollar values of statistical lives lost.  See

Please consider helping by signing the Consumer Reports Petition at CR.org/acnpetition.

Put People before Profits

Lou

Care for Crash Victims – Good News!

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

As NHTSA is about to record the 4 millionth American death due to crash injuries.  I described the history of crash deaths in 2016.

See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/assets/MonthlyReportforJanuary2016-Corrected.pdf

It is now time to report some good news.

Unfortunately the good news is not from NHTSA.

The good news is that Consumer Reports has initiated a campaign to get NHTSA to do its job.

Consumer Reports has launched a campaign to get NHTSA to mandate, as a Motor Vehicle Safety Standard, that automakers provide Automatic Crash Notification and URGENCY software with information on the probability of the presence of serious injury.  Such equipment would be required in all new vehicles free of charge.

The lack of such lifesaving equipment is a problem that I have worked on since 1991 when an airbag equipped Volvo resulted in a fatality without such protection.  See Case number 91-002 at
https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/940714.1.1.pdf

See my article on the Consumer Reports Life Saving Initiative at

https://www.legalreader.com/consumer-reports-takes-steps-to-save-lives/

The potential to save lives is enormous.

Truck Underride Crash Victims Make Their Case For Safety

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

Crash victims of Truck Underride Tragedies are taking their case for safety to the one court higher than the Supreme Court – the Court of Public Opinion.

Marianne Karth who lost two daughters in a truck underride crash has been working intensely along with many others for greater safety for years.  And now support for safety is growing stronger.

Legal Reader has kindly published an article on the subject that I have submitted Pro Bono.

Please see

Lou

Choose Wisely to Save Money, Aggravation, and Possibly Your Life

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community

Members:

The best information source to help you be smarter and to be safer is Consumer Reports.

I have just written an article, pro bono, for Legal Reader to help readers make wiser auto purchasing decisions. 

See
https://www.legalreader.com/use-your-power-of-choice/ 

But consumers need the best possible purchasing auto safety information — especially as crash fatalities and serious injuries continue to grow.


And people need Consumer Reports to do more and better.

One important thing Consumer Reports can do is add information on the number and location of airbags in each model.  The IIHS has such information and can collaborate with Consumer Reports to make it more widely available. 

See https://www.iihs.org/topics/airbags#how-front-and-side-airbags-work

In addition, Consumer Reports can inform its readers of the safety importance of the car color choice with “White” being about 10% safer. 

See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/assets/muarc263.pdf

Be informed.

Be wise.

Be safer.