A website that helps car buyers compare safety features and fuel efficiency is part of a Vancouver-based Whiplash Prevention Campaign launched this month.
What started as a project to help people choose cars with good safety features expanded to include vehicles with a smaller carbon footprint because fleet managers want that information.
The result is a website that lets you rate your current car and also look at how other cars stack up, explained Douglas Romilly, the campaign’s project leader and a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of British Columbia.
“There is no other site that we’re aware of that brings all this information into one source. It’s very easy to access and it’s a very new product.”
While finding a vehicle with proper safety gear is one step, using that equipment is another. About 40 per cent of B.C. drivers don’t have their car’s head restraint properly adjusted to prevent whiplash, according to research by the team Romilly oversees at UBC.
They took photos of 2,770 drivers at 31 sites in B.C. and ran them through computer analysis. Thirty-nine per cent didn’t have their head restraints, or headrests, in a position that would protect them in a crash, 61 per cent were acceptable and only 44 per cent of the total were in the optimal position for safety.
Drivers of full-sized pickup trucks and minivans were among the worst offenders, Romilly said.
Using data from ICBC – including its 2002 estimate that whiplash claims ate up $135 from every annual car insurance payment in B.C. – Romilly’s team calculated that whiplash injuries cost British Columbians more than $464 million a year in lost work, medical bills, disability and lawsuits.
Research suggests that proper use of well-designed head restraints reduces the chances of injury between 24 and 44 per cent, according to the campaign.
The answer is to move the top of the head restraint even with the top of your head, or slightly higher, and make sure it’s only an inch or 2 cm away from the back of your head.
“Do the tap test,” Romilly said. “Tap the top of your head and move your hand back to make sure the head restraint is at least as high as the top of your head. You don’t want it lower. You also want to make sure the back of your head is very close to the head restraint. … no more than five cm at the most, or two inches.”
Even the idea of calling it a head restraint – rather than a headrest – can help people understand that it’s a piece of safety equipment, like a seatbelt or airbag. The difference is that seatbelts and airbags are designed to reduce injury in head-on and side impacts. In a rear-ender, the head restraint comes into play.
That’s significant because rear-end collisions are the most common type of crash in B.C., making up 27 per cent of all collisions involving more than one car. While they aren’t a major cause of fatalities (five people died in rear-enders in B.C. in 2007), there were the cause of 7,608 injury collisions in B.C. that year. The Insurance Corp. of B.C. confirms that 65 per cent of British Columbians injured in a crash reported soft-tissue damage to their neck or back. These injuries are often difficult to treat, causing months or even years of pain.
“We should treat the head restraint just like a seatbelt. Even though we don’t have a law that says we should be adjusting it, it’s a primary safety device in your vehicle. So just as you could snap together your seatbelt, you should be adjusting your head restraint,” Romilly said.
Medical researcher Marc White is also the executive director of the Vancouver-based Canadian Institute for the Relief of Pain and Disability, which is a sponsor of the Whiplash Prevention Campaign. Taking a few precautions can help avoid years of suffering, he said.
“From our perspective, the message is that you don’t have to be a victim. You can take an active role in preventing or limiting whiplash.”
But you don’t have to buy the most expensive vehicle to be safe – many moderately priced cars are highly rated, White added.
The Whiplash Prevention Campaign is also sponsoring a video contest, with student and adult categories, looking for the best 30-second to three-minute spot explaining how to avoid neck injuries in a crash. For details on the contest, car safety ratings and a downloadable pamphlet on how to adjust your head restraint, go to http://www.whiplashprevention.org
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