American football’s championship game, the Super Bowl, was played last Sunday (those of us based in Seattle would rather not dwell on the result). The game was the most watched telecast in U.S. history, with an estimated 114.4 million viewers. Not surprisingly, this huge audience is an advertising jackpot – the revenue from this year’s game exceeded 330 million U.S. dollars. An […]
Category: Advocacy
Hope for future gun control
Last week was the anniversary of the horrific Newtown shootings. That was when I saw an item on Mother Jones that prompted this posting. That item described the work of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America (MDA). This group was founded after the Newtown massacre and it has had several important victories, largely […]
Engagement: The fourth ‘E’ in injury prevention
Regular readers of the Injury Prevention blog will know what a keen advocate I am for the fourth ‘E’ in injury prevention: Engagement. I firmly believe that engagement is vital to transforming and translating education, engineering and enforcement efforts into real world advances in injury prevention. I know that in the domain of my own research […]
Connecting, coordination and coverage is crucial: my experiences with Fatality Free Friday
Last Friday, May 28, was Fatality Free Friday (see http://www.fatalityfreefriday.com/) here in Australia. The aim of the event is Not a single road death in Australia for just one day. Just one Fatality Free Friday. The Fatality Free Friday website states: We believe that if drivers are asked to actively concentrate on road safety and safe […]
From evidence to policy and practice
Regular readers of the Injury Prevention blog will be quite familiar with my obsession for getting our rigorous research translated into policy and practice. I regularly hear from individuals in industry and government, not to mention the general community, that researchers are great at communicating with other researchers, and not so great at communicating with ‘normal people’. Upon hearing this […]
Recalls on the radar
Over the past few months I have noticed an abundance of recalls for various products, including mass recalls after ignition switch defects in General Motors cars. As noted on their website (http://www.gmignitionupdate.com/faq.html), “There is a risk, under certain conditions, that your ignition switch may move out of the “run” position, resulting in a partial loss of […]
Guns on Campus in Idaho
Today, the Idaho House of Representatives will be discussing legislation that has already passed the state senate that would allow individuals who have a concealed weapon’s permit to carry a gun on college and university campuses in the state. One of the arguments in favor of this legislation is that someone who is considering carrying […]
Proactive rather than ‘The Hindenburg’ response
I had a conversation recently with a colleague who is a tireless worker in the safety of pedestrians, and his comment regarding policy response resonated with me so much that I thought I would share it with you. He likened policy response to road safety to the Hindenburg Disaster of 1937 (see www.airships.net/hindenburge/disaster for more […]
Kids and Guns
A recent article in the New York Times captures several elusive aspects of gun violence prevention efforts and the “gun culture” that exists in some places in the United States. The article, Titled “Children and Guns: the Hidden Toll” focuses on the most tragic of unintentional gun related fatalities; those that involve children shooting themselves […]
Experts concerned over the car safety features in Brazil
Rafael Consunji shared an interesting news feature on passenger car safety standards in Brazil written by Bradley Brooks of the Associated Press (Link: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-cars-made-brazil-deadly-180411170.html). Brooks in his feature, based on experts’ opinions, indicates that passenger cars made by the international automakers in Brazil lack standard safety features, which they usually provide in the cars […]