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According to a new study, from the Center for Injury Research and Policy (CIRP) at Columbus Children’s Hospital, the number of kids in America injured in nonfatal schoolbus accidents each year is more than double the estimates suggested in former studies, with motor vehicle crashes topping the list of injuries.

An estimated 23.5 million children travel billions of miles on school buses in the United States each year. The CIRP study is the first to use a national sample to describe nonfatal school bus-related injuries to children and teenagers treated in hospital emergency departments across the country.

According to the study, which was published in the November 06 issue of Pediatrics, from 2001 through 2003 there were an estimated 51,100 school bus-related injuries that resulted in treatment in an U.S. emergency department. That is about 17,000 injuries annually.

This most recent study represents a more comprehensive look at school bus related injuries than previous studies, which have generally focused on fatal or crash related injuries.

On school bus-related injuries, one of the study’s authors stated, "Our results indicate that they are more than three times more common than earlier estimates. In addition, the findings from this study indicate that traffic-related crashes are the leading mechanism of nonfatal school bus-related injury for children in the U.S.”

According to the study, the highest proportion of injuries occurred during the months of September and October with children aged 10 to 14 years old suffering the most injuries compared with all other age groups. Traffic-related accidents, where the child was injured as a passenger on a school bus as a result of a collision between the bus and another motor vehicle, topped the list of causes and accounted for 42 percent of the total injuries. Among all the patients, strains and sprains were the most commonly encountered injury.

Data for the study was collected from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The analysis included all patients 19-years-old and younger in the NEISS database, who were seen in a hospital emergency department for a nonfatal school bus-related injury during the three-year period.

The authors emphasized that, since the data was collected from NEISS, only kids seen in a hospital ER after their accident, were counted.

Children receiving chiropractic care after injuries, or ones that were treated by their parents, school nurses/doctors or pediatricians, were not incorporated into the total injuries reported.

The National Coalition for School Bus Safety believes children deserve seat-belts on school buses. According to the NCSBS web site, "the basic design of the Large Yellow School Bus has not been changed since 1977."

The National Coalition for School Bus Safety: About the Big Yellow School Bus
Locate Doctors of Chiropractic in your state: local chiropractors

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