Division of Acute Care Surgery Associate Professor Jan Jansen, MBBS, Ph.D., and Assistant Professor Shannon Carroll, M.D., were published in the Traffic Injury Prevention journal.

Their article was titled, “Automatic collision notification availability and emergency response times following vehicle collision—an analysis of the 2017 crash investigation sampling system.” Carroll and Jansen were listed as authors alongside UAB School of Public Health Associate Professor Russell Griffin, M.D., who provided the epidemiological expertise required for this analysis.

The objective of their article was to determine whether occupants of collisions involving at least one vehicle with an available Automatic Collision Notification (ACN) system have quicker times from collision to 1) Emergency Medical Services (EMS) notification and 2) arrival to a medical center. It is the first study to directly compare EMS response-related times between collisions involving vehicles with and without ACN.

Ultimately, the study found that ACN is associated with quicker times to medical center arrival, particularly for collisions occurring in less urban areas. In fact, ACN was associated with a near 10-minute decrease in median time (45 minutes non-ACN versus 36 minutes ACN from crash to medical center arrival).

This is an encouraging finding, but additional research is needed to examine whether these decreased times are associated with better clinical outcomes. A follow-up study is in planning.

The purpose of Traffic Injury Prevention is to bridge the disciplines of medicine, engineering, public health and traffic safety in order to foster the science of traffic injury prevention. The archival journal focuses on research, interventions and evaluations within the areas of traffic safety, crash causation, injury prevention and treatment.