Marketing safety could be answer
Dave Sullivan
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Mar 28/01) - Deaths like those caused by drunk driving are no accident because they are so predictable, according to an Edmonton fire prevention officer.
Accidents are by far the leading cause of death for those under 30 and tend to be ignored by society because safety advocates suck at marketing, Tim Vanderbrink told delegates March 23 at Yellowknife's drunk driving conference.
"Car fatalities are no accidents because cops can tell you what intersections will have collisions, what days and even what time."
"We have to change the way we approach safety," he told a small group of teachers in Yellowknife Friday during the national conference of Canadian Youth Against Impaired Driving.
When a case of meningitis is reported, "the whole health care system is mobilized" for vaccinations, but when eight Quebec children died in a mini-van accident last year, no changes were made.
"We have an attitude problem."
"Our children are dying of unintentional injury because the community doesn't perceive it as a problem."
He said Canadians are more accident-prone compared to other industrialized countries.
While Vanderbrink believes diseases like cancer and heart disease are important, they pale in comparison to the years of life lost to accidents because injuries tend to happen to people with much longer to live. Cancer and heart attacks aren't leading causes of death in poor countries because citizens don't live long enough to have them.
He said accidents "are the next big thing for us to tackle," and compared the safety movement to where anti-smoking was 20 years ago.
