General Safety Center

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Expert Tip

  • Road Rage: How To Avoid Becoming A Victim

    Road rage and "aggressive driving" claims thousands of lives a year. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that aggressive driving has been responsible for 2.28 million crashes and 27,935 traffic fatalities in the past five years. Interactions that might have involved non-violent gestures a few years back now may involve golf clubs or weapons. Remember, the deadliest weapons of all are vehicles themselves.

    According to a public information campaign created by Nissan North America and Dr. Jerry Deffenbacher, here are some tips on dealing with road rage:

    • Take road rage seriously: You could be dealing with a volatile, unstable person with a gun, or a person who, at the slightest provocation, may ram your car or attack you. It pays to be cautious: Treat every situation as potentially dangerous and explosive.

    • Do not inflame the situation: The situation must be handled in a calm, safe manner that gets you away from the conflict. DO NOT make eye contact, make faces or gestures, yell, flash your lights, or honk your horn.

    • Do not be manipulated: It is natural for you not to want to be pushed around. However, reacting that way will only inflame the other person. Cool heads prevail in these situations. If other drivers want to get the best of you in dangerous and childish ways, let them have the road; you and your family will be the winner.

    • Disengage: Life is too valuable to let someone with road rage affect you. Do whatever you reasonably can to avoid the person, making it harder for them to assault you. Back away, focus on safe driving and disengage. Do not pull over or get out of your car.

    • Seek Help: If the situation merits, call for help. Do not hesitate to report the driver, providing as much information as possible. This may avoid a violent situation, and may eliminate other incidents of road rage.

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The number of children injured in sports is staggering. According to the Safe Kids campaign, 3.5 million kids ages fourteen and younger receive medical treatment for sports-related injuries each year, half of which are overuse injuries. Many more injuries - such as emotional injuries, sexual abuse injuries - aren't even captured by this statistic.

This is the place to find information on a whole host of sports injury and treatment topics that cut across all sports and don't fit neatly into a specific injury category, like concussions or emotional injuries. MomsTeam's General Safety Center will continue to provide the latest information on general youth sports injury topics and a forum where everyone with a stake in injury prevention and treatment, including parents, athletes, coaches, officials, administrators, clinicians, and sports safety equipment manufacturers - can meet to exchange ideas and information and share concerns.

Together, we can reduce the number of injuries that our children suffere each year playing sports and make sure that we are doing everything possible to make their sports experience injury free.

-- Brooke de Lench, Founder and Editor-in-Chief

 

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