Everyone, please read the 10/2011 Public Safety Communications article, "Help, my car is sinking." And please share it with family, friends and colleagues. Motorists continue to drown while talking with dispatchers who have not been trained in, or do not have protocols for handling vehicle immersion accidents. Immediate exit via a window is crucial to survival and should be advised before asking for location information.
Since my grandson drowned when his vehicle went into a lake, I have researched and consulted with experts on vehicle immersion accidents. My mission is to share self-survival information in an effort to educate the public, and everyone involved with immersion accidents, and hopefully to reduce the number of fatalities that occur each year in the US (400/yr). I track immersion accidents and record them in a database for study and analysis. Just this year, for the month of January, my Google alerts have found more than 100 immersion accidents. Fortunately, the majority of those resulted in survival because the victims were either able to exit via a window or were rescued by a passerby who got them out a window. However, among the fatalities were some who drowned while on the phone with a dispatcher who was not aware of the correct protocol.
Just this week a teenage girl drowned in Ohio, while on the phone with a dispatcher. Her story is available at:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097393/Haunting-911-Brianna-Coon-17-trapped-sinking-car-drove-pond-rural-Ohio.html. Together, we can stop these preventable deaths. Please help by sharing and following the protocols provided in the article by Det. Robert May of the Indiana State Police. If you have questions or concerns, please let me know. Additional information is available on my web site at http://sites.google.com/site/getoutaliveorg/.