Visions of Trauma: Seatbelts Save Lives

For two days, a man lies on the stiff, white sheets of a hospital bed. His face is dotted with bandages, abrasions and ruby-red cuts. His neck is wrapped in a large white brace. A respirator does his breathing. Until he regains consciousness, the doctors and nurses do not know the full extent of his injuries.


Cindy Roler, a trauma nurse in the emergency room at Good Samaritan Hospital in Corvallis, pushes a button, removing this image from the projection screen. She explains that the man depicted was not wearing his seatbelt and was thrown into the windshield of his vehicle.

Roler is giving a presentation of Trauma Nurses Talk Tough (about saving your life), a “diversional” seatbelt safety course. She explains to the small crowd of participants, who are attending the class to remove seatbelt citations from their record, that car crashes are the leading cause of death in the US for people ages 1-25, and that a majority of the fatalities are the result of head, neck, and spine injuries, which could have been avoided with the use of a seatbelt.

“Without a malfunction, a seatbelt, worn properly, will keep you from hitting your head on the windshield,” Roler explains. “If you’re not wearing your seatbelt and you’re in the front, you’re going to fly into the dash or the windshield. If you’re in the back, you’re going to get bounced around like the popcorn in an air-popper.”

According to co-founder Joanne Fairchild, a flight nurse, Trauma Nurses Talk Tough was developed by trauma coordinator Michelle Haun-Hood, operating room coordinator Andy Burnett, and Fairchild, at Legacy-Emanuel Hospital in Portland in response to a car crash that cost three teenagers their life in 1986. The nurses decided that people needed to be informed about the consequences of risk-taking behavior.

"I wondered why we were letting this happen. The reality is that the human body is fragile and people don't account for that when they are making choices," said Fairchild.

According to Legacy-Emanuel's Web site, there are 10 safety seat belt classes throughout Oregon, and the class, combined with Oregon law 811.210, which requires the mandatory use of seatbelts, has had effective results. The Web site states that, after initiating a safety belt class, Clackamas county in Oregon showed an increase of safety belt use from 17 to 94 percent in six months.

The class at Good Samaritan Hospital, which has been around for five years, also appears to have made an impact.

”At the beginning, there was about 40-80 people in each of the classes. Now, it’s more like 15-20 per class. This seems like a good sign to me,” Roler says.

Throughout the presentation, as Roler brings the images onto the screen, participants turn their heads. They cover their eyes. They groan in dismay. The horrors of the trauma unit are displayed for them to see -- a woman with a broken neck, a man’s head sliced open, the lifeless body of a female driver.

“It’s all about choices and you are in charge,” Roler says.