* Swiss - Traffic accidents kill 1.25 million people each year worldwide
-- Traffic accidents kill about 1.25 million people each year around the world, participants at a forum on road safety warned Wednesday, calling on countries to work to reduce the alarming figure... World Health Organization (WHO) chief Margaret Chan conveyed a message from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, saying that “reducing traffic deaths is one of the Sustainable Development Goals and an obligation for the world” ... Some 90 percent of all traffic fatalities occur in developing countries, Chan said, adding that at least another 30 million people are injured in road accidents... Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death among young people aged 15-29 years. Almost half of all road traffic deaths are “vulnerable road users” — pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists, a recent WHO report said... Some 1,500 delegates from more than 100 countries, including health, transport and interior ministers, have gathered in Brasilia to find solutions to halve road traffic deaths and injuries by 2020... On the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims that falls on Nov. 15, Ban called on governments “to tighten enforcement of laws on speeding, drinking and driving, and to mandate and enforce the use of seatbelts, motorcycle helmets and child restraints — all of which have been shown to save lives” ... According to Chan, each year 500 billion U.S. dollars is spent worldwide on treating traffic accident victims, a substantial amount that could be better spent...
(File Photo AFP-Lehtikuva) -- Geneve, Switzerland - FTimes/Xinhua Report - Nov 19, 2015
** USA - Traffic accidents send 2.5 million to ERs each year, CDC says
-- Road crash injuries sent more than 2.5 million Americans to emergency rooms in 2012. And, nearly 200,000 were hospitalized due to motor vehicle collisions, a new federal government report says... That means about 7,000 people went to the emergency department every day because of motor vehicle crash injuries in 2012, according to Ileana Arias, principal deputy director for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control andP revention (CDC)... “Motor vehicle crash injuries occur all too frequently and have health and economic costs for individuals, the health care system, and society. We need to do more to keep people safe and reduce crash injuries and medical costs,” Arias said in an agency news release... The lifetime medical expenses for those crash injuries totaled $18 billion. That includes $10 billion for those admitted to hospital and $8 billion for patients treated in ERs and released, according to the Oct. 7 Vital Signsreport by the CDC... Work lost over a lifetime due to crash-related injuries in 2012 cost about $33 billion, the report found. The average lifetime cost of each crash-related ER visit was $3,300, and $57,000 for each hospitalization. More than 75 percent of costs occur during the first 18 months after the injury, according to the report... Teens and young adults — aged 15 to 29 — have a much higher risk for road crash injuries and accounted for nearly 1 million of such injuries in 2012 (38 percent). On the other end of the age spectrum, people older than 80 had the highest hospitalization rates. One-third of those over 80 injured in crashes ended up hospitalized, the report noted... There was some good news in the report. There were nearly 400,000 fewer ER visits and 5,700 fewer hospitalizations for crash-related injuries in 2012 than in 2002, according to the report. That translates to about $1.7 billion less in lifetime medical costs and $2.3 billion less in lifetime lost work costs, the report found... “Motor vehicle crashes and related injuries are preventable,” Gwen Bergen, a behavioral scientist in the division of unintentional injury prevention at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, said in the CDC news release... “Although much has been done to help keep people safe on the road, no state has fully implemented all the interventions proven to increase the use of car seats, booster seats, and seat belts; reduce drinking and driving; and improve teen driver safety,” she added...
(HealthDay News Picture) -- Washington, DC, USA - Ministry of Safety - 11th Oct 2015
*** USA - Study: Poor people more likely to die in traffic accidents
– The good news is that because of advances in automobile safety, fewer Americans are dying in car crashes. The bad news is that Americans who are struggling financially are not sharing in those advances, and are more likely than the well-to-do to die in a car crash. For people 25 and older who have less than a high school diploma, fatality rates have actually increased between 1995 and 2010. Researchers looked at data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Current Population Survey to determine traffic fatalities and education levels. They found the death rate for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists were about 2.5 times higher for those with the least education in 1995. By 2010 they were 4.3 times more likely to die in an accident, compared to higher education levels. “It’s true that there are big differences in the quality of the residential environments that people have in terms of their risks of accidental death as pedestrians,” study co-author Sam Harper told the Washington Post. Harper explains it’s not that a college degree makes someone a better driver. People with lower educations tend to driver older cars that lack many of the safety features found in new cars, like side airbags, automatic warnings and rear cameras...
(Photo by David McNew/Getty Images - Researchers say those with lower education levels do not have access to the latest safety features found in new cars) -- Washington, DC, USA - CBSDC - October7, 2015Labels: statistics, traffic accidents
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