Motor Vehicle Crash Injuries: Costly but Preventable: CDC Vital Signs: October 7, 2014

Details

• Corporate Authors:
  National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (U.S.). Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention.
• Description:
  More than 2.5 million Americans went to the emergency department (ED)—and nearly 200,000 were then hospitalized—for crash injuries in 2012. On average, each crash-related ED visit costs about $3,300 and each hospitalization costs about $57,000 over a person’s lifetime. The best way to keep people safe and reduce medical costs is to prevent crashes from happening in the first place. But if a crash does occur, many injuries can still be avoided through the use of proven interventions. More can be done at every level to prevent crashes and reduce injuries, but state-level changes are especially effective.
  
  State officials can:
  
  • Consider using proven interventions that increase the use of car seats, booster seats, and seat belts; reduce drinking and driving; and improve teen driver safety.
  
  • Support traffic safety laws with media campaigns and visible police presence, such as those used with sobriety checkpoints.
  
  • Link medical and crash data to better understand why crashes happen, the economic cost of those crashes, and how to prevent future crashes.
  
  CS251122A
  
  
• Subjects:
  Accidents, Traffic/prevention & Control Automobile Driving
• Series:
  Vital Signs
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Popular Works
• Place as Subject:
  United States
• Pages in Document:
  4 numbered pages
• Collection(s):
  Stephen B. Thacker CDC Library
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:3930760607628e69f11ca6823e592ca44ef04ca70797e69e8231791c0b25ff41b167b235061e8fd145e825d4c30303d27527ff3ffd482d58f636828354ed50ce
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/25534/cdc_25534_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.52 MB ]