US state with the highest traffic fatalitiy rate : and the winner is...

[sunnyKid]

Originally Posted by Rescue3

I appreciate your experiences and understand your point of view. Really, I do. I've been on accident scenes lately where we couldn't identify the brand of car but everybody walked away. Hard to comprehend - didn't used to see that. Better engineering is saving lives. We like that.

However, I know from many, many years of experience both as a trauma practitioner, researcher and teacher that velocity is the most variable factor in the trauma equation because it is squared. Simple fact is, you can't tear an aortic branch at 20 mph, but you sure as heck will at 70 mph. And an aortic branch tear is ALWAYS fatal. Think of it this way - accidental back-over events aside, how many people die in traffic accidents when the closure rate is 30 mph versus how many die when the closure rate is between 75 (think: car versus bridge abutment) and 150? (read: head-on collision.)

Your post also made me think - if better engineering is saving more lives, why is the fatality rate still so abnormally high here? I agree again that time to surgery is very, very important, and the per capita statistical skewing that occurs because Wyoming has a smaller population than just about everyone else also impacts the stats. But the studies are really conclusive: when we are talking about lethality in accidents, speed controls. It just does.

Rescue3 - I concur with your questions and concerns. Why? Because in 1983 I was stopped at a faulty railroad crossing and rear ended by someone at an estimated 20 to 30 mph. It ruined my life. We are not sure how fast the guy who hit me was going. That is a guess. But if he had been going any faster I would have died instantly. And it wasn't in Wyoming. But I grew up there, and we never wore seat belts.

In this freak accident that nearly killed me the makes of the cars and the kind of tires resulted in me being ejected into the top of my car. The velocity of my body was upwards and it was suddenly stopped when I hit the roof of my car. I sustained brain damage and the top vertebra where my spine meets my skull came very close to shattering. It was like diving into a shallow pool, but from a sitting position going upwards. I was lucky enough not to break my neck. My brain bounced inside my skull from zero to whatever velocity happens when you suddenly go upwards and then hit an immovable roof of the car. It stops suddenly.

I spent years in misery and agony and confusion. I couldn't spell anymore. I couldn't paint or write. I couldn't seem to make decisions. I couldn't remember my childhood. It was terrifying. No words can describe the agony. Slowly, very slowly I was able to function again. But it took almost thirty years to feel somewhat normal again. And it was no walk in the park along the way. I still cannot work. My mind fails me too often. I can't hold a sequence of ideas and execute tasks well enough. I worked for three decades to get my writing skills back again. It was not worth going without my seat belt.

I am saying this to encourage people to be careful when driving. It's not the statistics that are so important about Wyoming. It's the danger factors. They are high in Wyoming compared to other states.

I was just reading at find-a-grave about a man in Wyoming who was killed in a very odd way. He was an optometrist. He wasn't stupid. In fact, his brother had been killed a few years before on icy Wyoming highways. It was a perfect storm kind of situation. His car flipped and he was smothered with snow coming into the cab through a broken back window. His truck was traveling backwards on it's top. They posted details of his accident on his memorial at find-a-grave. It's so tragic.

My accident was a freak accident. We never wore seatbelts when I lived in Wyoming. So when I moved I didn't think twice about not using them. I had a relatively slow, but life shattering accident. The doctor whose cab filled up with snow? Who would have imagined that?

If it seems dangerous, slow down. Relatively low velocity almost killed me. Velocity that was perfect to gradually fill the cab with snow and smother the doctor is a nightmare. I think the lessons here are obvious. Nobody is safe unless they are driving for weather conditions. And just for the record? I got very little compensation for my accident. I had to settle because the railroad and the other guy's insurance company had enough money to fight me indefinitely.

[skelaki]

1. Drive according to conditions!
2. Wear seat belts!

Doing both does save lives. Of course something freak like snow coming into your cab and smothering you is just that a freak, rare occurrence.

[Wm Jas]

There are extenuating circumstances. When I was in high school I was driving home one evening in the dark when it suddenly started snowing large wet flakes. When I slowed down to a safe driving speed the vacuum pump windshield wipers in my 1950 Ford pick-up wouldn’t work. So every 30 seconds or so I was forced to pick up enough speed to get the windshield cleared before I go slow again to a safe speed.

Thank goodness I arrived home safely.

[WyoNewk]

^^ LOL I think that was a teenager's excuse for driving fast. Vacuum operated wipers would speed up when you let off the gas, not when you sped up. If they slowed when you did, it was because you were pulling hard in a high gear. You could have down shifted, or just let off the gas when you wanted them to speed up. I've driven lots of those old cars too. In fact, I had a backup vacuum system just like those in my old plane to run some of the instruments. If the standard vacuum pump went down, it kicked in. The instructions were to back off the power for 15 seconds or so every 2-3 minutes to let the instruments spool up again.