Click It or Ticket is a national campaign coordinated annually by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to increase the proper use of seat belts. In 2014, more than 21,000 passenger vehicle occupants died in motor vehicle crashes in the United States; 49% were unrestrained at the time of the crash (1). An additional 2.4 million occupants (restrained and unrestrained) were treated i...

Video communication within a Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) has the potential to be of considerable benefit in an urban emergency, as it allows emergency vehicles approaching the scene to better understand the nature of the emergency. However, the lack of centralized routing and network resource management within a VANET is an impediment to video streaming. To overcome these problems the pape...

OBJECTIVE Leading causes of fatal and non-fatal injury among US children aged <15 years were compared. METHOD A descriptive study was conducted using nationally representative data on injury related deaths (National Vital Statistics System) and on non-fatal injury related emergency department visits (IEDV; National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-All Injury Program). Data were accessed ...

BACKGROUND In most countries, road traffic collisions (RTCs) are the main cause of cervical spine injuries. There are several techniques in use for spinal immobilisation during prehospital extrication; however, the evidence for these is currently poor. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study is to establish which technique provides the minimal deviation of the cervical spine from the neutral in...

INTRODUCTION Little is known about the capacity and activity of emergency medical services (EMS) during large-scale disasters. This article provides a case study of the role of EMS in one large urban city during a major hurricane. METHODS The authors analyzed changes in call volume data from the City of Houston Fire Department's EMS during Hurricane Ike. Descriptive and statistical analyses a...

Emergency medical service (EMS) response combined with the increasing availability and usage of advanced automatic collision notification (AACN) systems in motor vehicles are important components in the effort to reduce fatalities and serious injuries suffered in motor vehicle crashes. This research note examines fatal motor vehicle crash locations in relation to the coverage area of helicopter...

Background Prompt and safe extrication of motor vehicle accident patients is essential to allow efficient transport to hospital. A rapid extrication technique was developed in the Oslo-Akershus Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and fire service in 1999. The Norwegian Air Ambulance Foundation trains fire fighters, police and EMS personnel in this technique. This study investigated how well the te...

A vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) allows vehicles to share traffic information and to alert each other of emergency events. To achieve this goal, a security mechanism must be designed to guarantee that no malicious vehicles can intercept, manipulate, or modify the traffic information without being detected. In this paper, we present two novel approaches to provide reliable traffic information ...

Objective: The objective of the current study was to describe the burden of back-over collisions within the context of other child pedestrian collisions as identified through a pediatric emergency room injury surveillance database. Methods: Injury data for child pedestrian motor vehicle collisions from 1994 to 2003 were obtained from the Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Progra...