Over a nine- year period (1997-2006) hospitalizations for ATV injuries increased 150 percent among youth younger than 18 years, with important demographic variations. Rates increased the most dramatically in the South and Midwest, and among teens ages 15 to 17. While males between 15 to 17 have the highest rate of ATV hospitalization, females ages 15 to 17 experienced the sharpest rise in ATV hospitalizations over the study time period, an increase of 250 percent. The report is published in the October issue of the Journal of Trauma.

“All-Terrain Vehicles are inherently dangerous to children,” said Stephen M. Bowman, PhD, MHA, assistant professor with the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy and the report’s lead author. “While manufacturers are required to label vehicles with engine sizes greater than 90cc as inappropriate for children younger than sixteen, our data indicate that a growing number of children are receiving serious injuries due to ATV use, suggesting that parents are unaware of these recommendations or are choosing to ignore them.”

In 1988, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and representatives of the ATV industry entered into a decade-long consent decree to reduce the risk of injury associated with ATV use; provisions included a ban on the sale of three-wheeled ATVs, a free nationwide training program for all ATV purchasers, improved safety labeling and a public awareness campaign. This consent decree expired in 1998 and is only continued by some manufacturers on a voluntary basis. While previous studies have examined the impact of the expiration of the consent decree between the CPSC and the ATV industry immediately following its termination, this is the first study to examine whether rates of ATV-injury hospitalizations have continued to increase.

“Clearly, too many children are being injured on these vehicles,” said co-author, Mary E. Aitken, MD, MPH, professor of pediatrics with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and director of the Injury Prevention Center at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. “Given the dramatic increases in hospitalization that we report, a renewed effort by the public health community, the ATV industry and the CPSC to address this problem is warranted.”

The researchers analyzed hospital discharge data from the Kid’s Inpatient Database (KID) of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, which is sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Injury Severity Scores (ISS), a widely accepted measure of injury severity, were calculated for each hospitalization. Results showed that all types of injury (minor, moderate and major) increased over the study time period, with rates for hospitalizations with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury tripling during the study time period.

“In our study 30 percent of patients hospitalized for ATV-related injuries had a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury,” said Bowman. “Increasing helmet use through a combination of policy and education is critical to curbing the increasing trend in ATV-related hospitalizations among children.”

Support for this research came from the Arkansas Biosciences Institute.

Contact for Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Tim Parsons at 410-955-7619 or tmparson@jhsph.edu.

Additional media contact: Alicia Samuels, MPH, Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy, 410-614-5555 or alsamuel@jhsph.edu.

For more news follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/JohnHopkinsSPH or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/JohnsHopkinsSPH.

Safety 2010 was a major world conference bringing together stakeholders in the prevention of unintentional injuries and violence from around the world to debate, discuss and exchange information and experiences.

The conference was organised by the WHO Collaborating Centre for Violence Prevention at the Centre for Public Health, Liverpool John Moores University. The conference is co-sponsored by the World Health Organization. The Department of Health, The Health Protection Agency, The Department for Transport and the Department of Education in England supported the conference.

The key theme of the conference was Safe and Equitable Communities. This theme was chosen to reflect the disproportionate burden from almost all types of injuries that falls on poorer communities. Such differences are apparent both within countries, between countries and even between global regions.

The conference highlighted the interface between different sectors, organisations and disciplines. It also examined unintentional injuries and violence linked to age, gender and ethnicity; focus on settings including the home, work, sports and leisure; and explore related environmental and sustainability factors.

Floor Lieshout, Chief Exective of Youth for Road Safety presented a speech in the closing session of the conferece and ‘challenged researchers and professionals to get more involved in road safety’. He highlighted the unprecedented burden facing young people globally while users of the roads and brought much needed attention to this area at the conference.

Mr. Lieshout shared the stage with EuroSafe Netherlands, The World Health Organization and the Karolinska Institute, Sweden. In the closing remarks, it was clear that as a the leading cause of unintentional injury and death of young people globally, road safety would need to sit high on the agenda of the attending organization. Alongside this, Mr Lieshout also chaired a Parallel Session on Young Drivers in which several global organizations participated.

More information about the conference can be found at: http://www.safety2010.org.uk or email: manpreet@youthforroadsafety.org

As summer slowly comes to a close, rays of possibility are shining strong in YOURS as we appoint two new members of staff. The two positions, as Project Coordinator and Communications Officer are appointed to Ms Nellie Ghusayni from Lebanon and Manpreet Darroch from the United Kingdom.

Project Coordinator
Ms Ghusayni’s experience in road safety related education and youth engagement make her the ideal appointment for YOURS Project Coordination. Her experience in the field of young people and road safety is extensive and Ms Ghusayni chaired the World Youth Assembly for Road Safety 2007. Her immediate role takes the responsibiity of designing and delivering YOURS’ Welcome Kit with partners of YOURS. Alongside this, the Project Coordinator will oversee the development of new projects and ensure quality standards and inherent youth involvement are the core of all YOURS projects.

Communications Officer
Manpreet Darroch is the Director of the UK based the UK based Tune into Traffic campaign, which has a massive online presence. His experience in involving young people in road safety through online active participation gives him a strong platform on which to promote the message of YOURS globally through online communcation and worldwide media projects. A recent example of this can be seen in the successful completion of the World Crossing Campaign, a worldwide collective action to illustrate young people’s commitment to road safety worldwide.

To find out more about these roles and to read a background profile about YOURS’ new appointments, check out the STAFF SECTION.

Since its inception in 2009, YOURS has been growing its online support rapidly. YOURS have created numerous videos that have received incredibly poisitive feedback and to extend our network and branch into the popular media world, YOURS has now launched its YOUTUBE channel.

Here, you will be able to watch our awareness videos as well as interviews, actions, events reports and campaigns. We are aiming to also use this channel as a platform for other road safety organizations to link with us and send us media that they feel would be appropriate for our youth network. With this is mind, YOURS will champion POSITIVE and EFFECTIVE road safety videos aimed at young people to which we will upload them to our channel to showcase to our supporters everywhere.

Do you have a road safety video aimed at young people? Want to be featured on our Channel and in our updates? Not only will this attract more views to your work in your nation but also raise awareness of the road safety issue to our network.

If you have any videos to send, attach them via (www.transferbigfiles.com) to manpreet@youthforroadsafety.org and we will select the best videos to showcase on our website and in our video broadcasting network.

So subscribe to our channel. check out our videos and we can make a difference through media!

We received lots of videos from young people from all over the world and we now have merged them together to create our awareness video! We would like to thank all participants for showing their commitment to making a change and keeping their peers safe on the road. The jury had a hard time selecting the best video, because there were so many good ones! In the end they selected the participant who contributed with the best video(s), considering the theme ´visibility´ and road safety.

We wanted to create, together with you, a strong statement to the rest of the world that young people are committed to keep young people safe on the worlds´ roads. Many of you participated in the World Crossing Campaign and on the right hand side of this page you can view the end result! We would like to extend a massive thank you for all of your contributions and please feel free to link the video on your own website, Facebook or Twitter account with the links at the bottom.

With this video, young people have visibly united to stand up against the injustice of road crashes around the world! We are proud to gather this visible want for change and publish it in this video! Young people CAN make a difference in the forthcoming Decade of Action for Road Safety.

And the winner is…
The jury had a very difficult task to select the best video, there were many great videos from all over the world, but they have managed and have selected a prize winner. The winner will have access to a grant of 1000 euro, dedicated to a road safety initiative for young people.

We are very proud to announce that the winner is: Mr. Siaka. K. Dibba from The Gambia. He made, together with his friends, 5 videos with different slogans and the result was both creative and exemplary of safe behaviour. We would like to congratulate him and we will contact him soon to follow up on his future campaign, funded by YOURS.

Special thanks
The World Crossing Campaign was a fruitful collaboration between the Tune into Traffic Campaign and YOURS. We would like to thank Manpreet Darroch for his endless efforts. Furthermore we would like to thank all participants that made the campaign a big success. We hope we can count on you again for our campaign next year which will be even bigger!

The campaign will carry the motto “We play and drive by the rules” and has been developed to inform people around the world – especially the young people who are basketball fans or play basketball themselves – and to encourage respect for the rules, on the road as well as on the court.

Every year some 1.3 million people die as a result of road traffic crashes worldwide – amounting to more than 3,500 deaths each day. More than half of the casualties are pedestrians, cyclists or other road users not traveling in a car. Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for children and young people aged between 5 and 29. In addition, on average 20 to 50 million people sustain non-fatal injuries from road traffic crashes each year. These injuries are a significant cause of disabilities worldwide.

Experience shows that these are not accidents, but events that can be prevented through daily action and awareness raising. There is ample evidence in many countries in the world that respecting basic road safety rules dramatically reduces the risk of suffering a crash, and, should a crash happen, dramatically reduces its adverse consequences.

The “We play and drive by the rules” campaign is organized with the support of the Turkish Basketball Federation (TBF), which will host the championship, the Spanish Basketball Federation (FEB) and the Turkish National Police (TNP), which is in charge of road safety enforcement in the host country.

The campaign will include video clips with José Calderón, World champion with the Spanish national team, Kerem Tunçeri, of the Turkish national team, and Harun Erdenay, the Turkish Basketball legend. These will be broadcast in the arenas where the games will be played and on the television channels broadcasting the games. Information booths will also be displayed in the arenas in the four cities hosting the games: Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir and Kayseri.

A Declaration for road safety, signed by officials of UNECE, FIBA, TBF and TNP, will be displayed in the arenas to invite the players of the various teams to join the campaign and declare: “We play and drive by the rules”.

Ján Kubiš, UNECE Executive Secretary, said: “The need for action to improve global road safety has been acknowledged by several resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly and by the First Ministerial Conference on Road Safety held in November 2009 in Moscow. We hope that this joint campaign at the FIBA Basketball World Championship 2010 will contribute to spread the road safety message across the world and help save lives”.

Patrick Baumann, FIBA Secretary General, said: “The basketball family has already lost a lot of its members on the road – famous stars as well as amateur players who travel by road every other week to play with their team. This is a needless, shocking and tragic loss of life which needs to be tackled urgently. With this campaign, FIBA hopes to hammer home the message that we want everybody, both in and out of the sport of basketball, to play and drive by the rules.”