[Angy El-Khatib] This post is from guest blogger Bethesda Yohannes. Bethesda is an intern at the Injury Prevention Center of Greater Dayton in Dayton, Ohio, United States. She is currently a second year undergradute student in the College of Education and Human Ecology at Ohio State University. As the journey to reduce traffic-related fatalities continues, more […]
Category: Driving impaired
Media and injury prevention
As an injury prevention researcher, I am often dismayed at the way in which injuries, risk, and injury prevention efforts are portrayed in the media. I clearly recall being disgusted as an idealistic teenager, having read a newspaper article regarding the untimely death of a peer who had been killed during a police chase. The […]
Texting laws reduce traffic fatalities
Quick post here to highlight a nice study authored by Alva O. Ferdinand and colleagues at the University of Alabama at Birmingham that examined the impact of state texting laws on motor vehicle fatalities in the United States. I came away with two important findings from the study. First, primary enforcement (which means that officers […]
More on Driving under the influence of Marijuana
There was a fascinating article published on the issue of driving under the influence of marijuana this past Monday in the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/health/driving-under-the-influence-of-marijuana.html?hpw&rref=science&_r=0 Marijuana and driving is an issue of increasing relevance as US states continue to legalize medical marijuana and Colorado and Washington State have now legalized recreational marijuana. The challenges associated […]
Would you drive blindfolded?
I hope you said ‘no’ in response to that question! If you didn’t, maybe you shouldn’t be sharing the road with the rest of us sane people! To me, driving whilst distracted is just like driving blindfolded. In either scenario, you cannot and do not see the road in front, to the side, or behind […]
Notes from Canada on bullying and DWI
Two items that I trust will be of some interest to readers of this blog. The first is from Paul Kells, the former CEO of Safe Communities in Canada. Now that SC has been absorbed by Parachute (the new umbrella organization – no pun intended) he has launched a new career and one part of […]
Hands-free doesn’t mean distraction-free
The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety in the United States has just published a report titled, “Measuring Cognitive Distraction in the Automobile.” https://www.aaafoundation.org/measuring-cognitive-distractions The report, based on research led by David Strayer from the University of Utah, concludes that many activities that don’t require the use of hands still pose a significant cognitive distraction that […]
Marijuana and driving: How much is too much?
Two U.S. states, Colorado and Washington, have recently legalized the recreational use of Marijuana and both are struggling with the question of how much is too much when it comes to Marijuana and driving. Colorado and Washington have both recently passed legal limits for tetrahydrocannabinol or THC in the blood at 5 ng/ml but Washington’s […]
National Transportation Safety Board Recommends a move from 0.08 to 0.05 BAC laws in the U.S.
On May 14, 2013 the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in the United States released a report titled, “Reaching Zero: Actions to Eliminate Alcohol-Impaired Driving.” http://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/reports/2013/SR1301.pdf The National Transportation Safety Board is a legislatively mandated independent federal agency that is charged with, among other things, making recommendations related to transportation safety. The NTSB report is […]
Distractions – a growing injury issue moving beyond the car?
Distracted driving has justifiably received a tremendous amount of attention in the injury prevention field. But the issue of distractions and the associated injury risk might be getting even bigger and becoming more relevant outside of the motor vehicle realm. There is lots of interesting speculation about an impending boom in wearable computing. Several major […]