Welcome to Stop The Damage. Hosted by the Brain Injury Association of NJ.

A brain injury can hap­pen to any­one at any­time. The dam­age can be long lasting…broken bones, cracked skulls, lives torn apart! Often it was from some­thing that could have been pre­vented. Our goal is to stop the damage!

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Archive for March, 2011

Mar
24

Do You Have the Right Car Seat for Your Child’s Age and Size? Do Your Friends?

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Car Seat Rec­om­men­da­tions for Children

  • Select a car seat based on your child’s age and size, and choose a seat that fits in
    your vehi­cle and use it every time.
  • Always refer to your spe­cific car seat manufacturer’s instruc­tions; read the vehi­cle
    owner’s man­ual on how to install the car seat using the
    seat belt or LATCH sys­tem; and check height and weight limits.
  • To max­i­mize safety, keep your child in the car seat for as long as pos­si­ble, as long as the child fits within the manufacturer’s height and weight requirements.
  • Keep your child in the back seat at least through age 12.

Birth – 12 months

Your child under age 1 should always ride in a rear-facing car seat.
There are dif­fer­ent types of rear-facing car seats: Infant-only seats can only be used rear-facing. Con­vert­ible and 3-in-1 car seats typ­i­cally have higher height and weight lim­its for the rear-facing posi­tion, allow­ing you to keep your child rear-facing for a longer period of time.

1 – 3 years

Keep your child rear-facing as long as pos­si­ble. It’s the best way to keep him or her safe. Your child should remain in a rear-facing car seat until he or she reaches the top height or weight limit allowed by your car seat’s man­u­fac­turer. Once your child out­grows the rear-facing car seat, your child is ready to travel in a forward-facing car seat with a harness.

4 – 7 years

Keep your child in a forward-facing car seat with a har­ness until he or she reaches the top height or weight limit allowed by your car seat’s man­u­fac­turer. Once your child out­grows the forward-facing car seat with a har­ness, it’s time to travel in a booster seat, but still in the back seat.

8 – 12 years

Keep your child in a booster seat until he or she is big enough to fit in a seat belt prop­erly. For a seat belt to fit prop­erly the lap belt must lie snugly across the upper thighs, not the stom­ach. The shoul­der belt should lie snug across the shoul­der and chest and not cross the neck or face.

Remem­ber: your child should still ride in the back seat because it’s safer there.

DESCRIPTION (RESTRAINT TYPE)

A REAR-FACING CAR SEAT is the best seat for your young child to use. It has a har­ness and in a crash, cra­dles and moves with your child to reduce the stress to the child’s frag­ile neck and spinal cord.

A FORWARD-FACING CAR SEAT has a har­ness and tether that lim­its your child’s for­ward move­ment dur­ing a crash.

A BOOSTER SEAT posi­tions the seat belt so that it fits prop­erly over the stronger parts of your child’s body.

A SEAT BELT should lie across the upper thighs and be snug across the shoul­der and chest to restrain the child safely in a crash. It should not rest on the stom­ach area or across the neck.

Download the 4 Steps Flyer

Categories : Drive Safe, Highway, New Laws, Other, Passenger Safety, prevention, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
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Mar
16

Nah, it’s Alright. My Cell has Bluetooth.

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And what’s so wrong about that, if you’re dri­ving? You’re not hold­ing the phone, after all…

If you’ve taken a Driver’s Ed class any­time in your life (within the past cou­ple years that hands-free call­ing has actu­ally been around, at least) you’d know by now some­thing that a hor­ri­fy­ing num­ber of peo­ple don’t—hands-free phones are like a frac­tion of a per­cent less risky than hand-held to use while driving.

That makes no sense.

Yeah, that was the first thought that went through a lot of peo­ples’ brains when this rev­o­lu­tion­ary idea was first intro­duced. Why? Isn’t the big prob­lem with cell phones that you have to take your hands off the wheel to use them, and look down at the screen to text?

Well, that’s some of the prob­lem. It’s never good to drive with one hand, no mat­ter how pro you may be at doing so on a bike. How­ever, that’s not all of it. When you’re dri­ving along and talk­ing over the wire to some­one, your atten­tion strays from where it should be—the road—to the per­son that you’re talk­ing to. And unlike the per­son sit­ting next to you, the per­son on the other end of the con­nec­tion won’t know if you’re mak­ing a tricky turn or maneu­ver­ing through cars or any­thing. They won’t quiet down for you when you need to con­cen­trate, and you can’t sud­denly shut up at times to con­cen­trate or you’ll risk offense.

Imag­ine the sce­nario like this: you’re play­ing video games (COD, Black Ops, Poke­mon, what­ever) and you’re all intent on your game, when some­one decides to start talk­ing to you from the side. You’re not tak­ing your eyes or hands off the game—but your mind is, the moment you start talk­ing, and then, unless you’re a real pro gamer—GAME OVER.

Except, real life isn’t a game. So, don’t treat it as one—the cold, harsh, real­ity, is, there is no “back” or “reset” but­ton. So, treat the one life you have carefully—even more care­fully than the last life you’re on two lev­els from beat­ing a game after half a year’s worth of intense work.

Categories : Distracted Driving, Highway, Impaired Driving, New Laws, prevention
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Mar
08

Kyleigh’s Law: Helpful, Annoyance, or… Hazard?

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Well, it seems to be a rather sim­ple law impos­ing even more restric­tions on the already greatly-oppressed (in the opin­ions of the teenagers) teenagers. So, of course it sprung up a huge con­tro­versy that’s pos­si­bly threat­en­ing a ride straight up to the Supreme Court.

In case you’ve been liv­ing under a rock or some­where other than the amaz­ing state of New Jer­sey lately, you may be won­der­ing what this law is all about, so here’s a brief (and yet sur­pris­ingly com­pre­hen­sive) expla­na­tion. Young adult dri­vers, dri­vers under 21, must stick red decal stick­ers onto their license plates while they drive to alert other dri­vers that they are rel­a­tively (or greatly) inex­pe­ri­enced and young.

For typ­i­cal teenagers, I’m sure the first thing that comes to mind is that it’d be such a pain to stick those stick­ers on and off when­ever you’re dri­ving. Oh, and there’s all that annoy­ing sticky stuff that always gets left behind when you peel stick­ers off and that you’re usu­ally too lazy to scrape off (unless you’re an OCD-type per­son like me). Your next thought may very like be the same one that has con­cerned moth­ers Donna Traut­mann and Jayneann Stru­ble into actu­ally suing the state of New Jer­sey and its gov­er­nor for pass­ing this law that it infringes on pri­vacy rights. (If you’re an AP Gov stu­dent or some­thing, you may also be enraged over the pos­si­ble vio­la­tion of the Fed­eral Driver’s Pri­vacy Pro­tec­tion Act as well as the Fourth Amend­ment of the actual Con­sti­tu­tion under the cat­e­gory unrea­son­able searches and seizures’.)

Well, as many peo­ple already know, the law was upheld at the appeal and deemed con­sti­tu­tional. The Appel­late panel declared that while the pri­vacy acts list of restricted per­sonal infor­ma­tion is long and (aptly– termed) exhaus­tive, it never men­tions age or age group, and that rather than dis­clos­ing pri­vate infor­ma­tion about the indi­vid­ual, it sim­ply groups him or her into a gen­eral pop­u­la­tion group.

Yeah, but it’s still annoy­ing, know­ing that other peo­ple will see those decals and auto­mat­i­cally form a bias against you other dri­vers, the police, and… Rapists? Pos­si­bly. Inves­ti­ga­tion is under­way in order to affirm whether or not the rel­a­tively new law is more of a haz­ard than a safety pre­cau­tion for young dri­vers, and in the mean­time, the two moms are not giv­ing up. I won­der if this really will make it to the Supreme Court one day? Whether or not, it’s cer­tainly an inter­est­ing case to follow!

Categories : Distracted Driving, Drive Safe, high school, Highway, New Laws, Teen
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Mar
01

Designate a Sober Driver this St. Patrick’s Day

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SAINT PATRICK’S DAY 2011
IMPAIRED DRIVING PREVENTION CAMPAIGN
MARCH 8 — 17, 2011

Kiss me, I'm Sober!

For many Amer­i­cans, St. Patrick’s Day has become a pop­u­lar night out to cel­e­brate with friends and fam­ily.  Unfor­tu­nately, due to the large num­ber of drunk dri­vers, the night out has also become very dangerous.

On St. Patrick’s Day 2009, 37 per­cent of the dri­vers and motor­cy­clists involved in fatal crashes had a blood alco­hol con­tent (BAC) of .08 or above, accord­ing to sta­tis­tics by the National High­way Traf­fic Safety Admin­is­tra­tion (NHTSA).

To assist in this cam­paign, NHTSA has cre­ated this safety cam­paign plan­ner to pro­vide you with mar­ket­ing mate­r­ial, earned media tools, and mar­ket­ing ideas that you can dis­trib­ute to fit your local needs and objec­tives while, at the same time, part­ner­ing with other States, com­mu­ni­ties, and safety orga­ni­za­tions on this program.

Here we include mes­sag­ing, tem­plates, and ban­ners that you may choose from to sup­port your impaired dri­ving ini­tia­tives sur­round­ing St. Patrick’s Day. The mate­r­ial avail­able to you can be used in sev­eral capac­i­ties and all carry the tagline, “Des­ig­nate a Sober Dri­ver this St. Patrick’s Day” to rein­force our Buzzed Dri­ving is Drunk Dri­ving mes­sage plat­form.


See also:
UGotBrains.com
NJTeenDriving.com

Categories : Drive Safe, DUI, DWI, Highway, Impaired Driving, prevention
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