Buckling down about buckling up
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From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
You could say they've been making cars safer. What it really means is that cars have more safety features, but it's still up to us to use them.
At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, epidemiologist Laurie Beck has an example:
``The most effective step that anyone can take to protect themselves in a motor vehicle is to wear a seat belt every time they ride in a car.'' (7 seconds)
Easier said, maybe. But those who don't buckle up raise their odds of being in the statistics that Beck studies. About 34,000 people die each year from motor vehicle crashes. And in 2009, 2.3 million adult drivers and passengers were treated in emergency departments because of injuries from crashes.
The data are in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Learn more at hhs.gov.
HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss