Home > Rationale for Crash Response Research

Key challenges for those who respond to motor vehicle crashes are to:

• Rapidly identify and locate the 250,000 seriously injured people from amongst the 27 million vehicles involved in crashes each year, and

• Provide the appropriate level of care in time to save lives, prevent disabilities and reduce pain and suffering.

The figure below shows the magnitude of these challenges. As a direct result of motor vehicle crashes each year, America suffers approximately:

Of the 42,000 crash deaths each year, about half die after transport to a medical facility.  All too often, these deaths occur because the crash victim did not reach definitive surgical care (usually only found at a trauma center) or because they arrived at definitive care too late to be saved.