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Jessica Bunch Seems To Be Winning Her Battle To Recover From Horrible Redbox Accident -- Appeals For Apology And Help With Medical Bills

7/29/2015

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Good news -- Texas teenager Jessica Bunch, after four surgeries and something approaching $1million in hospital bills, seems to be recovering slowly from her horrific injuries.

Jessica was standing at a Redbox machine in front of a Wagreens store in Canton Texas on 7 July, and was struck down by a driver who accidentally hit the gas pedal instead of the brake.  Neither Redbox nor Walgreens, despite dozens and dozens of such crashes going back at least five years, cared enough for the safety of customers (or employees) to bother with simple, inexpensive, and effective safety barriers placed between Jessica and oncoming vehicles.
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Jessica and her father want to change laws to prevent this sort of accident from ever happening again;  such efforts are already underway in California, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Florida.

You can see more of Jessica's story in the previous blog post, but for right now, I will let Jessica's father, Don Bunch, give you an update in his own words.  You can see his post online (and donate to her recovery fund) at the GiveForward fundraising page "Jessica Bunch -Extended Hospital Relief" HERE


Day 19

Posted by Don Bunch on July 25th, 2015

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Jessica finally got out of ICU on Day 17 and has been moved to a room. She is trying to eat a little, we have got to get the pace picked up a little or they will have to put a feeding tube in.

Hopefully all surgeries are done. She has had four of them, the first was to stop the internal bleeding, and the second was to remove her appendix, gall bladder, and part of her bowel, the third was to reconstruct her pelvis and the fourth was to reconstruct her rib cage. She has been put through a living Hell right here on earth.

I felt so sorry for her, she lifted her gown and looked down at her tummy and started crying, I ask what was wrong and she said that my body is so cut up, I will always have  these scars. I tried to talk to her to soothe the heart ache, but she is heart broken.

Her attitude is a lot better than I ever expected, for someone who was literally crushed to death, she is taking all of this pretty good. She is very optimistic about the accident. She would like to talk to the elderly women that ran over, Jessica says that it will help with forgiving her. I hope this is true.

All in all I’m glad to have my baby girl back. We still have a long way to go, but with the Grace of GOD we will get there.

Thank you so much for all the donations, but most of all thank you for the prayers.

Don Bunch


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Families of Older Drivers: Having Hard Conversations That Prevent Tragedies

12/24/2014

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The other day I posted about an accident at a Walgreen store in Arlington Massachusetts, 10 miles outside of Boston.  An 87 year-old driver had struck and severely injured a Salvation Army "Bell Ringer" in front of the store -- reports are that the driver confused the front entrance for a drive-up window and drove along the sidewalk and struck the entrance and the 50 year-old volunteer (see an update on the story and the recovery of the injured man HERE.)

The question that I asked in the post was fundamental  --  how and when do families get involved when a driver starts to become too physically or cognitively impaired to drive safely?  My own family has experienced this first hand -- and it was not an easy time for any of us.  Telling an 89 year-old ex-B-29 pilot that he was no longer a safe driver was hard on him and hard on my brother and sisters -- we could have used some good advice to make it go easier.

So I was very pleased to see that Matt Gurwell of KEEPING US SAFE posted his comments about the accident and how families can speak to older relatives about transitioning out of the driver's seat. 

I know Matt and his organization;  while AAA and AARP have more conventional programs that focus on older drivers sharpening their skills, Keeping Us Safe is focused on helping families and medical professionals help older drivers to give up driving in favor of safer alternatives.

Matt's comments are reproduced below in hopes of continuing this important discussion.

Thank you very much, Mr. Reiter for allowing me the opportunity to respond to your post. Your comments raise several important issues, but for purposes of your blog I would like to focus on one issue in particular, "When and how should these conversations start?"

How great it would be if there was a boilerplate answer to this question. It would be so nice if we could just turn to the chapter in the manual on caring for our aging parents and then simply follow the set of instructions and checklists on how to have a difficult conversation with either of them (each would, of course, have their own manual).

But it’s obviously not that simple, primarily because the dynamics of every family are different. What might work in your family would never work in mine, and vice versa. Despite society’s best attempts to make a model that would guarantee every family’s success, there still is no “one size fits all” game plan on how concerned family members should approach a parent about driving cessation.

The good news, however, is that over time some ‘patterns of success’ that can serve most families very well in their attempt to help a loved one make a smooth transition from the driver’s seat to the passenger seat have evolved. Here are three (of many) recommendations that seem to present themselves consistently when we look at stories of successful family-prompted driving retirements:

1) Start the conversations now (today!), regardless of where your loved one is in the aging process

In other words, start greasing the skids now! Discussions about driving cessation should take place over time. Assuming time permits, this should be a process as opposed to an event. Start talking to mom today about the possibility of someday having to retire from driving. According to a study that first appeared in the American Journal of Public Health, we are outliving our safe driving years by 7-10 years. For me personally, I want to fall into that category; I want to live long enough that I outlive my safe driving years!

Again, assuming you are starting these discussions early enough (pre-diminishment in cognitive or physical skills), consider starting simple conversations with your loved one like “Mom, did you see on the news where the 87 year old driver near Boston ran over the Salvation Army bell ringer?”. And then engage your mother in a discussion about what she would do if her driving skills ever began to diminish. These should be very simple, non-intrusive conversations.

2) When it comes time, these ground-breaking conversations can be escalated appropriately

Now, if your loved one’s driving abilities ever do begin to slip, you are already comfortable talking to a parent about diminished driving skills. You can use the momentum gained from these previous discussions as a foundation to escalate the intensity and directness of your continuing conversations. It may now be appropriate to present similarities and likenesses to the leading news story, comparing that story with something that happened recently with your loved one.

3) Use appropriate verbiage and terminology

You don’t need me to tell you that the family conversations surrounding an aging parent’s diminished driving skills can become very emotional or even worse…volatile! When not handled properly, these conversations have been known to divide families. They are complicated, sensitive and sometimes very frustrating. To make matters worse, your loved one may already be experiencing some type of cognitive decline, which is skewing their natural ability to make rational decisions.

Your conversations with mom or dad need to be based on facts, not on a family member’s opinion, emotion or speculation. Telling dad that is driving is “horrible and he’s going to hurt someone” can be likened in many ways to launching a grenade at him. Stay away from general statements and opinions and focus on the facts. “Dad we are concerned about your driving because ……..” will prove much more effective.

That makes using the right verbiage and terminology very critical to the process. It is equally important to understand that this project needs to be worked as a collaborative effort between family and the older driver. Don’t use phrases like “take away the keys” or “take your car”, if you do, you’re right back at the whole grenade thing! Using softer, less aggressive terms like “driving retirement” and “transitioning to the passenger seat” are sure to help make the overall process more amiable for the older driver.

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87 Year Old Driver Mistakes Front Door of Walgreens For  Drive-Up Window -- Salvation Army Bell Ringer Injured.  When Does Family Help Seniors To Hang Up The Keys?

12/20/2014

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This is a very sad story.  It is sad because there are two victims.

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The first victim is the Salvation Army volunteer "Ringing the Bell" for Holiday donations.  He was struck by the 87 year-old driver and pinned beneath the car.  You can see the excellent Boston Globe coverage of the accident HERE.

The other victim is the driver and his family.  Helping older drivers know when to hang up the keys and how to cope with that life changing moment is agonizing for families, and it is too often not handles until after an accident has occurred.  You see, there is speculation that the driver mistook the glass doors and the awning above the entrance for the drive-thru window.  See photo below of the entrance at this Walgreens location.

The "Silver Tsunami" of aging drivers is a growing problem in America.  For our current storefront crash statistics by age of driver, see our page on this website (or click HERE.)  The terms "elderly drivers" and "senior drivers" appear way too often in the reports of storefront crashes, with tragedies like this one (and many far more tragic) in the news every single day.

We will be writing more on this topic, and we will be asking our friend Matt Gurwell of Keeping Us Safe to guest blog on the topic of helping aging drivers to make the choice to stop driving before they are involved in an unnecessary accident that can have horrible consequences for so many.
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Farrell's Ice Cream Crash -- Out of a Tragedy Comes an Effort to Pass a Local Ordinance to Prevent Storefront Crashes

11/15/2014

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Back in April we recounted the story of a tragic case of a senior driver parked in an ADA space who made a simple error and caused his SUV to lurch forward and smash into people sitting on a bench waiting to go into the restaurant.  The 81 year-old driver killed 73 year-old Marisa Malin and critically injured Marisa's granddaughter, Isabel Manalo.

This accident was foreseeable.  It was predictable that a driver in the act of parking or unparking in that ADA space might lurch forward and strike the bench and whoever was sitting on it or standing near it.  IN addition, this accident was preventable.  A very simple barrier, in this case a row of bollards that have since been installed subsequent to the tragedy, would have prevented the surging SUV from striking anyone waiting at the bench.

Fast forward 7 months later:  Isabel is making a great recovery.  The restaurant is now protected so this will not happen again.  The family is healing with the passage of time.  But there is more to the story.

Mike Fleming is the owner of Farrell's and he has vowed that these kinds of preventable accident need to be eliminated.  Victor Manalo, Isabel's father and Marisa's son-in-law, is a city councilman in Artesia California and he has taken it on himself to require some sort of safety barrier between vehicles and patrons and pedestrians at storefront locations such as this one.  These two men are working hard to make sure that this type of storefront crash never happens again in their town.

Please see the coverage from Los Angeles CBS2 on this story -- both the written article and the video.  Thanks to CBS for their story, and thanks to Victor and Mike for working so hard for this cause.  Stay tuned for more information on the Artesia City Ordinance requiring safety barriers and bollards in certain areas of parking lots .


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NEW UPDATE:  Just 19% of drivers are responsible for 45% of all vehicle-into-building crashes.

9/17/2014

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As we continue to collect more data and continue to analyze the information we have collected,  we are able to observe more trends developing on causes of vehicle-into-building crashes and more about the drivers in those crashes.    We have just finished running accident data by driver age and found that our results run much higher than the expected curve for the age of drivers who have storefront crashes.

As the chart below illustrates, we have compared national figures for the age of licensed drivers (stated as a percentage of total licensed drivers) against the reported ages of drivers involved in vehicle-into-building crashes (when driver age is reported.)  What we have found is startling -- just 19% of the licensed drivers are responsible for something like 45% of such storefront crashes.

Those 19% of licensed drivers who are  responsible for 45% of all storefront crashes are drivers over the age of 60.

By comparison, 44% of licensed drivers who are responsible for just 38% of all storefront crashes are drivers under the age of 40.

While there has been a great deal of research indicating that drivers over 65 are more likely to have pedal error accidents than younger drivers, most of those studies have been conducted by NHTSA or State and Federal Transportation or Highway departments using data collected from reports of incidents which occurred on state or federal roads and highways.  In contrast, most of our data is collected on private property;  parking lots, malls, local streets and driveways, etc.  Significantly, our data also shows that pedal error is the leading cause of vehicle-into-building crashes in such locations -- as high as 36%.

Our data is very different from highway data because pedal error is many times more common in the act of parking or unparking.  Driving into and through parking lots is very much more hazardous than on open roads, as NHTSA pointed out in their report in 2013.  NHTSA noted a study done in North Carolina which showed that injuries and deaths are much more common in lower speed accidents in parking lots and retail storefronts than they are in highway collisios -- mostly because of the presence of unprotected pedestrians outside of stores and vulnerable employees and customers inside the stores.  See the NHTSA study and the North Carolina data HERE.

We have no desire to get into a shouting match with NHTSA, or for that matter with AARP, AAA, and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, all of whom have gone to great lengths to paint the problem in a very different light.  So we will just say that the Storefront Safety Council a very small, all-volunteer organization which would be overjoyed to receive any help or support available from competent parties who would like to help us crunch data, conduct research, or compile anecdotal or media reports on crashes going back to 2004 -- which is what we are trying to do while we attempt to stay current with as many of the sixty or more storefront crashes that we believe occur in the United States every single day.

But we say to those organizations -- if you have better numbers for storefront crashes on private property than we have -- please share them with us.  And if you have them, why in the heck have you not tried to do something to call attention to the problem?

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)


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A note about our accident numbers:  Our research turns up crashes (limited to commercial or public buildings, transit stops, public areas, and other non-residential structures) using anecdotal and media reports, court records, and published studies.  These are then analyzed for details such as accident cause, age of driver, type of building and other information, and are then added into our growing database.
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    I am an expert in perimeter security and retail and pedestrian safety.  I am also co-founder of the Storefront Safety Council

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