About a month ago, I had some questions around why I mentioned seatbelts when discussing safety issues in Eanes. Earlier that day, I saw a group of high school students jumping out of the back seat of car for lunch, and they did not have to pause to remove their seatbelts. The trauma nurse in me was immediately triggered.
In high school, we lost classmates tragically to a freak accident. There were survivors in the vehicle. They survived because they were wearing a seatbelt. The back seat passengers did not have on a seatbelt. In my 15 year career as a Trauma ICU nurse, I witnessed even more unnecessary loss due to passengers without a seatbelt. To see the face of a driver realize passengers in their car died, and know they will carry that with them for the rest of their life, I just wouldn't want that for any of our students or families. This is easily preventable with education and reinforcement reminders. We can always increase, improve and reinforce our focus on safety.
Currently, the Austin community and people all over the world are sending support and condolences to the family and school after the tragic accident and loss for Tom Green Elementary. The school bus hit by a cement truck was built in 2011 and did not have seatbelts for the students. In Eanes, one of the Bond Projects included the installation of seatbelts on all route and field trip buses. I'm very thankful for the board approving this necessary upgrade. But putting seatbelts on the bus isn't enough. Embedding the use of passenger seatbelts EVERY SINGLE TIME is critical. We as parents need to reinforce this to our children. This is our job.
Teens, as both passengers and drivers, have the lowest rate of seat belt use of any age group, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The risk of vehicle crashes is higher among 16-19-year-olds than among any other age group. Teens are 3x more likely to die in a vehicle crash than any other age group. 79 % of rear teen passengers do not wear a seatbelt. Do these statistics concern you? I saw this in action, in our community, in a parking lot. Our children.
The Trauma Nurses Talk Tough (TNTT) program began in Portland, Oregon, in 1988 to teach risk avoidance behaviors and their target group was high-risk teen drivers. Trauma nurses to this day still teach the course and tell real-life stories about real people who sustained preventable injuries because they were not wearing seatbelts. As a Trustee, I would love to facilitate access to my community resources to support educational partnerships and bring in reinforcements for these necessary conversations. Have you talked to your teen about not just their belt, but the if the passengers they carry know to always buckle up?
Raising our kids is a journey. Parenting is harder than I thought it was going to be and sometimes the world seems so much more dangerous now than it used to. We are all thinking the same thing and I don’t mind being the one to admit it. With our children, we have a front-row seat to an amazing ride– just don't forget to make sure everyone is buckled in!
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