Safe and Sound

Issue No. 2

Emergency, emergency! Dial 911 from a land line telephone

A Wall Street Journal story tells of an 18-year-old girl who dialed 911 as she was being attacked. Having no way to find her, emergency personnel could only listen as she was beaten, raped, dragged to an alley, and shot. It happened in 1993, but such emergency disasters are still reported today.

More than a third of the 190 million calls placed to 911 each year are placed from cell phones.

That?s a problem because only 41 percent of the 6,100 emergency call centers in the U.S. can locate cell phones, public safety officials say. The situation is getting worse with the growing popularity of Internet-based phone services, some of which can?t access 911.

According to the National Emergency Number Association, only six states plus the District of Columbia have the technology to find 911 callers from most places in the state, not all but most. Three other states are close to competition, and sixteen states have upgraded less than 10 percent of their counties.

The Federal Communications Commission has set a year-end deadline for Verizon, Nextel, and Sprint to upgrade nearly all their customers to GPS-enabled phones which can be traced through a special chip. Even if they persuade customers to upgrade, no deadline has been set for local and state governments to install equipment to handle such calls. No federal agency has the jurisdiction to set one.

When an emergency occurs, your safest choice for reaching 911 is a land line telephone. When a call is made from a traditional fixed-line phone, the caller?s location is automatically displayed at the 911 call center.

The science of evacuation: Here's how to get out alive

Ships sink and buildings burn. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods take their toll. When first it happens, however, people refuse to believe the seriousness of the situation. They waste time before evacuating and risk their lives.

After the 9/11 attacks, many survivors waited six minutes before attempting to leave the buildings.

When people are told to leave before a hurricane or flood, most waste valuable time checking with four or more sources before deciding what to do, according to a 2001 study.

People caught in disasters tend to fall into three categories: 10 percent to 15 percent are calm and act quickly and effectively. About 15 percent weep, scream, or otherwise impede evacuation. The rest do almost nothing. They are "stunned and bewildered" say psychologists quoted in Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine.

Mental rehearsal vastly improves people?s responses to disasters, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

• People who obey fire drills and read safety diagrams on airplanes have programmed their brains to escape. They should also mentally rehearse.
• In a skyscraper, move toward the best exit immediately in an emergency. Keep flat shoes on hand.
• In airplane evacuation, don?t stop for your carry-on. Leave immediately.
• In an office building or factory, know your emergency exit plan. Don?t check with the boss first, get out.
• When you are ordered to evacuate a hurricane area or flooding, do it fast.

Speaking of Safety: An air bag for your knees

First there were driver air bags and passenger air bags, then came side air bags and side-curtain air bags, and now comes the knee air bag.

The extra safety feature is designed to make sure the driver?s body doesn?t slide down and forward as a result of the momentum in a front-end collision.

The Chrysler Pacifica, Chrysler Town & Country, and Dodge Caravan feature knee-air-bag systems because the dashboards in these vehicles are farther away from the driver seats.

The Lexus RX 300 sport-utility vehicle and the RX 400 hybrid offer this feature along with the GS 300. The GS 430 luxury sedan has knee air bags for both the driver and the front-seat passenger. And the Toyota Avalon has knee bags.

The degree of how much knee air bags help depends on such factors as the amount of energy involved in the collision, the size of the vehicles involved, the size of the occupants, and how far away the seat is from the dashboard.

Beware of stale green lights

Drivers of trucks, buses, and other large vehicles should use extra caution when they recognize a stale green light, according to the National Safety Council.

If you approach an intersection from more than a block away, and the light is staying green, you should be prepared to stop. Most red lights are set to last for about 45 seconds. (The red lights are longer at an intersection which has multiple turn lanes.)

Drivers of buses and large trucks should remember that turns at intersections require additional safety precautions. They could ride up on the curb, endangering pedestrians, if they make a right-hand turn that is too sharp.

Truck and bus drivers shouldn?t swing out too far to the left when making a right turn. Drivers of passenger cars could think a truck is turning left and try to cut ahead on the right side, resulting in a collision.