New Child Seat Study by the Pediatric Academic Societies

Kevin Jones

Technical Analyst

Messerschmidt Safety Consultants

Results from new research by the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) highlights potential safety hazards when it comes to children staying properly restrained in child seats. The study was led by Lilia B. Reyes, MD, clinical fellow in the Department of Pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine. PAS surveyed 378 parents with children ages six years and younger. Parents were asked when their children began to self-unbuckle themselves while in vehicle restraint systems.

The results from the study are as follows:

• 51% of the parents reported that their children unbuckled their child safety seats while in vehicles;
• 43% of the children that unbuckled themselves did so while the vehicles were in motion;
• 75% of the children unbuckling their child seats were three years of age or younger, with the youngest reported age being 12 months;
• More boys than girls unbuckled themselves (59% were boys; 42% were girls).

The study performed by PAS was a pilot study and does not address the issue of whether the child restraints were installed properly. Read more about the study, "Little fingers, big trouble," which was released on May 1, 2011.

Kevin Jones is a certified Child Passenger Safety Technician. He volunteers for Children's Hospital in Birmingham, where he installs child safety seats for the public. Email Kevin Jones.

Tuscaloosa and Montgomery, AL DPS Field-testing eWeight, Aiding Efficiency of Weight Crews

Kelly Messerschmidt
Technical Communications Manager

Messerschmidt Safety Consultants

Placing limits on how heavy a load a trucker can legally carry is a frequently debated issue. Facing pressure to move larger loads, some trucking operations view fines for weight limit violations as part of the price of doing business, and they haul heavier loads than they are permitted to.

Illegal overloads create serious problems for truck stopping distances, overall highway safety and the integrity of road pavements, and they also maximize demands on truck weight enforcement units. Without enforcement, law-abiding trucking companies face a competitive disadvantage when they comply with the law and others don't.

According to the Alabama Department of Public Safety (DPS), Motor Carrier Safety Unit weight crews in Tuscaloosa and Montgomery are currently field-testing eWeight, an electronic/paperless system for filing weight reports. EWeight will improve the efficiency of the DPS Motor Carrier Safety Unit by eliminating the many hours needed to manually input data from the 4000-6000 paper forms processed each month. In addition, the electronic system will help truckers by decreasing the amount of time spent at weigh stations and giving them more on-duty hours available to move freight.

EWeight automatically calculates axle weight, and the statistical information it generates will improve the efficiency of weight crews. The eWeight system follows other electronic systems such as eCite and eCrash, which were developed for the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center (ACJIC)’s Alabama Dashboards for Visualization, Analysis and Coordinated Enforcement (ADVANCE) program, by The University of Alabama’s Center for Advanced Public Safety (CAPS). Learn more about ADVANCE. Read an article about the Alabama initiative in the May 5, 2011 edition of The Blue Light.

Following the 4/27/11 Tornado Outbreak... How You Can Help

Bill Messerschmidt

Manager

Messerschmidt Safety Consultants

The recent tornado outbreak spanning Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia was the deadliest outbreak in the United States since 1932. Considering the huge advances in communication and forecasting technology since the days of the Great Depression, the death toll is staggering.

The photo above was taken by Birmingham, AL resident Greg McNair of Aerial South just before the FAA declared a “no-fly zone” over most of Birmingham. View a larger image. The path of the tornado is clearly visible, from Concord, AL, in the bottom left, moving toward Downtown Birmingham in the top right.

People from far and near have been stepping up to help the victims of the tornado, as well as helping the families and communities located in and around its path. If you know of other organizations or charities collecting donations or other ways to help those in need, please leave the information as a comment to this post.

The needs are great. Here are some ways you can help.

Text REDCROSS to 909999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross, or visit the Red Cross online.

Text GIVE to 80888 to donate $10 to the Salvation Army Emergency Disaster Teams, or visit The Salvation Army online.

Help Mission Birmingham: fill out Mission Birmingham's form online.

Give to Samaritan’s Purse.

Check out Toomers for Tuscaloosa on Facebook (even if you’re not an Auburn fan or alum). At the time of this posting, there are 73,682 people "liking" this page and helping out!

"Novice Mistakes" and Distracted Driving Among Teen Drivers

Garrick Infanger

Armstrong Forensic Engineers

MSC would like to thank our friends at Armstrong Forensic Engineers for this guest post.

Distracted driving is now a hot topic among both legislators and the press. Should car accidents resulting from texting be treated as a crime? Are anti-texting laws and service announcements effective?

Georgia's July 1, 2010 ban of texting while driving makes it one of 30 states with similar laws. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that there is some debate as to whether texting laws actually increase the rate of accidents as people attempt to text out of sight from police, actually furthering their attention from the roadway.

Utah recently passed a new law that penalizes drivers who text to the same degree as drivers who drink and drive. The New York Times reports, "In effect, a crash caused by such a multitasking motorist is no longer considered an 'accident' like one caused by a driver who, say, runs into another car because he nodded off at the wheel. Instead, such a crash would now be considered inherently reckless."

Even Oprah has gotten in on the debate with a campaign titled the "No Phone Zone." What else leads teen drivers into accidents? Should we be looking at other "novice driving" mistakes?

Tara Parker-Pope looks at teen drivers at her blog "Well":

Teenagers are notoriously bad drivers, accounting for 10 times as many crashes as middled-aged ones. But short of keeping them off the road entirely, is there a way to make their driving safer - for them and for the rest of us?

New research suggests that there is. A nationally representative sample of more than 800 crashes involving teenage drivers shows that almost two-thirds were due not to reckless behavior like speeding or joyriding but to three novice driving mistakes: failing to scan the road, misjudging driving conditions and becoming distracted.

Focusing on these three common mistakes could go a long way in improving teenage driving and reducing fatalities, said an author of the report, Dr. Dennis Durbin, co-director of the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

With the encouraging news that truck-related fatalities continue to decrease, we can hope the state of teen drivers also improves with time.

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Garrick Infanger writes for the Forensic Engineering Hub, an engineering-focused blog sponsored by Armstrong Forensic Engineers.

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Photo Credit: Stuart Bradford

Senators Pryor (D-AR) and Alexander (R-TN) Introduce New Electronic On-board Recorder (EOBR) Legislation

Benjamin Smith

Principal Technical Analyst

Messerschmidt Safety Consultants of Mississippi

US Senators Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) introduced new legislation on March 31, 2011 that would require the installation of Electronic On-board Recorders (EOBRs) in commercial vehicles to document drivers' compliance with Hours-of-Service (HOS) rules.

The March 31 press release indicates that the Commercial Driver Compliance Improvement Act will require the EOBRs to be tamper-resistant, identify the vehicle's operator and record driving time, communicate with the Engine Control Module (ECM), provide real-time location recording, and allow for the data to be accessed by law enforcement in roadside inspections.

Senators Pryor and Alexander's new legislation aims at enforcing HOS rules more effectively and accurately. In the press release, Pryor said, "The trucking industry faces the constant balancing act of keeping fatigued drivers off the road while ensuring stores are full of merchandise. After several meetings with the trucking industry and Senate hearings on highway safety, I believe the most effective solution is to require the use of electronic on-board recorders."

MSC Participates in the 2011 SAE World Congress

Benjamin Smith

Principal Technical Analyst

Messerschmidt Safety Consultants of Mississippi

For the third consecutive year, MSC was involved with the publication and presentation of new research for the SAE World Congress. This year MSC was represented by Benjamin Smith who coauthored a new research paper, "Data Extraction Methods and their Effects on the Retention of Event Data Contained in the Electronic Control Modules of Detroit Diesel and Mercedes-Benz Engines," (SAE 2011-01-0808), with David Plant and Timothy Austin.

This paper was presented along with research such as Ruth and Daily's paper on Event Data Recorder (EDR) accuracy, Bare, Everest, Floyd, and Nunan's research paper on sensing diagnostic module (SDM) pre-crash data transfer, and Austin and Farrell's paper on Caterpillar Electronic Control Module (ECM) snapshot data. In addition to the research papers presented, some of the technical sessions and discussions addressed accident reconstruction topics including drag sled accuracy and usage, forensic photogrammetry, and diesel engine retarder acceleration rates.

Truck-Related Fatalities Continue to Decrease

Bill Messerschmidt

Manager

Messerschmidt Safety Consultants

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), there was a substantial decline during 2009 in the number of drivers and vehicle occupants who were killed or injured in crashes involving large trucks (i.e., trucks over 10,000 pounds).

Last month, NHTSA released an Early Edition of Traffic Safety Facts, an annual publication containing a compilation of highway crash statistics. According to the Early Edition of Traffic Safety Facts 2009, 3,380 drivers and occupants were killed in crashes with large trucks, and 74,000 drivers and occupants were injured.

Those numbers seem large until one considers that the Federal Highway Administration has estimated that large trucks traveled a staggering 288 BILLION miles on US roadways during 2009. That equals a fatality rate of 1.17 persons killed per 100 million miles of truck travel, and 25.7 persons injured per 100 million miles.

In 2009, both injuries and fatalities declined substantially from 2008, when NHTSA estimated that 4,245 people were killed and 90,000 were injured, and the fatality rate per hundred million miles was 1.37.

Check out NHTSA’s Early Edition of Traffic Safety Facts 2009.

View the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's large truck crash statistics.