Car Safety: Firefighters Improve Rescues

Reported April 2010

MCKINNEY, Texas (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- While that new car you're driving may make you feel safe on the road, what happens if you end up in a wreck? Now, local fire crews are going high-tech to find the best way to rescue you.

It's the call rescue crews hear more than six million times a year. Every year, 115 people die in a car crash in the United States. That's one death every 13 minutes. Looking at the leftovers of past car crashes in a scrap yard, it seems getting trapped victims to safety quickly is getting tougher.

McKinney, Texas fire department chief Ron Moore knows the score: how newer cars are better made, with high-strength steel made to withstand regular cutting tools. That means precious seconds may tick by while rescue crews identify the best way to rescue you.

"Our goal would be to have equipment that is always able to accomplish the task," Moore told Ivanhoe. "Suddenly we're out gunned."

Moore rolled up his sleeves, hit the books, and ultimately hit the web, turning a year of research on materials science into an online service to help fire crews I.D. weak spots in car models that are the best places for rescue workers to start. Rescuers can pull the information up on laptops right at the scene of the accident.

"The metals we're having to cut -- some of the hydraulic tools -- are not able to do that," Kevin Kennedy, fire captain in McKinney, Texas, said.

Kennedy has worked more scenes that wind up like this than he'd like to remember, and he's run into the same issues. So when Chief Moore rolled out this site, complete with video tutorials, it made the job, and the challenge of quick medical transport, easier.

That means rescue crews have truly put the "rapid" into "rapid response" -- getting victims out of their cars and into the ER faster. For a veteran like Chief Moore, that's the best part of putting his brain, and brawn, to work.

"I gave the fire service options, things we never even thought of, and that's my real triumph," Chief Moore said.

The color-coded online tool will point out danger zones in 25,000 makes, models and years of vehicles. If wireless Internet service or a laptop are not available in the rescue truck, the program can be accessed by the 911 dispatch center and relayed to rescuers.

The Materials Research Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Ron Moore
Dept. Chief
Extraction Expert
McKinney, TX
(252) 329-4397
rmoore@mckinneytexas.org

Materials Research Society
Warrendale, PA 15086-7573
(724) 779-3003
http://www.mrs.org
webmaster@mrs.org

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