Originally Posted by
doober
Where did you get this info? It substantiate a gut feeling that I have, but have never had much success in finding such stats.
I came from a report by the NHTSA in 2002 if you dig on the NHTSA site you should find it. The costs also comes from insurance company data
Whats not readily posted is the number of people critically injured in car wrecks each year. average person seriously injured in a car wreck (defined as a wrecks with entrapment, rollovers, ejections, or massive destruction of the frame of the body) the hospital and rehab bills from those persons ranges between $100K and a five million. the ratio of persons killed to injured is about 15-25 for every 1 person killed. so the $$$$ add up very quickly. That 8+ Billion could go a long way to making driving and roads safer.
A real bad example is last year i responded to a 12 car accident during a storm that left the roads icy. I was amazed in all the destruction there were no fatalities; we only had 1 critical the other 15 people were fine (2 ended being transported because they started complaining of neck pain). The one critical was a car had been crushed between 2 18 wheelers, and had to be cut out of the car. patient was a multi-system trauma nightmare -- bilateral femur fracture, Bilateral shattered tibia/fibula and ankles. Fractured pelvis, broken back, multiple broken ribs, tension pneumothorax, crushed cervical vertebrate and depressed skull fracture. Think jello thats what it was. It blew my mind that this person was still alive. As soon as I realized that along with the other medic that had crawled into this mangled car, we called for a helicopter as we both knew we were going to need help(airway issues as well as major bleeding) and rapid transport once the car was cut apart. Ill spare the real gory details but this person made it to a trauma center in critical condition, but alive where a trauma team went to work
This patient spent 6 months in the ICU and was only moved to rehab 2 months ago. This patient recently met with the air and ground crews that responded to the wreck. I would have never believed this was the same person from almost a year ago. person is still in a halo and needs a wheelchair but is alive. Also found out that the medical bills alone from this wreck were over 10 million, and still has a long recovery to go.
this is how injuries can go, fatalities can be just as bad or worse.