carwrecks

Each year, a countless number of drivers and passengers in motor vehicle accidents survive due to the deployment of the automobile airbag. According to a number of independent and government studies, automobile airbags have decreased fatalities by about 21 percent for unbelted drivers and by at least 9 percent for drivers wearing seatbelts.
 
The downside of airbag deployment is the introduction of a new spectrum of
injuries. Most are minor, but some can be life threatening. These injuries
include eye damage and trauma to the spine, facial nerves and facial bones.

Of particular interest to me are hearing and balance disturbances.

Clients who are in wrecks where the airbag explodes complain to me of hearing loss and/or ringing in their ears, a condition that physicians call tinnitus.  

New vehicles are now equipped with side and other airbags, sometimes totalling up to 10 airbags.  With airbags exploding at about 170 dB, a car wreck suddenly becomes a very noisy environment with high potential for hearing loss and/or tinnitus.

I hope that physicians treating victims of motor vehicle accidents will take ear injuries into consideration when documenting patient injuries and offering emergency care.

When shopping for a car, it would be helpful to know the relative cost of insurance of one model compared to another.  While it is intuitive that expensive cars will cost more to insure than inexpensive cars, insurance company statistics reveal that the inexpensive car may have a much higher reported rate of injuries.  That will result in higher premiums than an expensive car.

Here's a link to help you make those comparisons before your purchase.

Statistics from last year indicated that traffic deaths had fallen to the lowest level since 1949. 

Now, a report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration  compares the first half of 2012 with the first half of 2011 and projects a 9 percent increase (PDF).  Officials at NHTSA called this the largest such increase during the first half of the year since the agency began collecting the crash data in 1975. 

Why are traffic deaths trending upward?

This may be a statistical anomaly. With a mild winter in many parts of the country, people drove more. In addition, the recovering economy probably contributed to people driving more than before, and with more miles comes more wrecks.

No one knows when we will return to trending lower, but it seems inevitable. We now have safer vehicle and roads.  It is likely that we will again see the rate of traffic deaths fall over time.