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Pedestrian Trauma
April 2, 2008 |
“Well I ride my bike to work almost every day. I run three or four or five times
a week so there’s not much I haven’t seen out there that it just doesn’t amaze
me anymore what I’m seeing,” says Dan Moser. Along with an avid biker Dan is
also an injury prevention coordinator who works specifically with bicycle and
pedestrian safety. What he sees are the close calls between cars, bicycles and
pedestrians on the roads in Southwest Florida. “It only takes anything over
about 30 miles an hour and it starts becoming a life and death matters if you’re
involved in a crash with a car if you’re not in a car yourself.” Syndi Bultman
is a Trauma Nurse who also educates the local community on injury prevention.
She says, “We don’t have very good statistics on that at all. We have a lot of
bike and pedestrian fatalities here so we really feel that it’s important that
that education keeps getting out to the public.” As a trauma nurse Syndi has
seen the most serious of bicycle and pedestrian accidents. Both she and Dan
agree that more attentive drivers could mean fewer patients at the Lee Memorial
Hospital Trauma Center. “There are some mean-spirited people out there that
don’t like the fact that bicyclists are on the road or that people are just
trying to cross the street. Those folks aside the other ones that are not paying
attention that have too many things going on when they’re trying to drive that’s
the scary part because it’s no longer the exception it seems to be the rule,”
says Dan. Syndi agrees that drivers need to focus on being more aware.
“Sometimes we just look in our mind thinking that oh we need to look to make
sure there’s no cars coming so that’s all we see even though we could be looking
right at that pedestrian so we need to get in that mind set,” she says. In
recent years pedestrian traffic fatalities have accounted for more than 11
percent of all traffic fatalities. To learn more about free injury prevention
courses or teen traffic safety classes log onto www.leememorial.org. |
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