Dr. Terrence Curran, a trauma and critical care surgeon at Morristown Memorial Hospital, wrote an op-ed for the New Jersey Star-Ledger in support of introduced legislation to raise awareness about the dangers of distracted driving. He suggests that widespread public education campaigns are needed to change behaviors and lower the toll of traumatic injury on our highways.
“The word ‘accident’ is not part of the vocabulary because trauma is a very preventable disease,” Curran says. He shares some of the realities of traumatic injury that he sees on a daily basis–for those lucky enough to live–damaged bodies, agonizing months in rehabilitation, permanent disabilities and suffering.
“I applaud Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex), Nicholas Chiaravalloti (D-Hudson) and Patrick Diegnan (D-Middlesex) for introducing legislation to raise awareness about the dangers of distracted driving,” Curran says, “but we should not wait for that bill to pass to increase the fight against dangerous driving behaviors.”
“While both the National Institute of Health and the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program of the Department of Defense fund trauma research, the level of spending does not equal the magnitude of the problem,” he adds.