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When we contemplate the effects of an Oregon spinal cord injury one of the most tragic realities is the knowledge that such injuries are often irreversible. Months of hard work with a physical therapist may do much to make things better, but rarely does a patient have any real hope of returning to life as it was before an Oregon car accident or some other tragedy caused the spinal cord injury.

A recent medical study, however, holds out the prospect that scientists are taking some early steps toward changing this. The La Jolla Light reported recently on a study by biologists at the University of California – San Diego. Working in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Oregon, the scientists focused on “more than 70 genes that play a role in regenerating nerves after injury.”

According to the newspaper, the two-year project uncovered “a set of genetic leads that may one day result in therapies to repair spinal cord injuries and other common kinds of nerve damage, such as a stroke.”

An Oregon car crash in Scappoose, north of Portland, initially injured one woman then left a second woman seriously injured when she, in turn, became the victim of a hit-and-run driver after stopping to help, according to a recent dispatch in The Oregonian.

The newspaper, quoting a Multnomah County law enforcement spokesman, reports that the Northern Oregon auto accident began when a 30-year-old woman headed west on U.S. Route 30 “left the roadway, striking a guard rail near the Oregon Department of Transportation weigh station east of Scappoose.” The paper also notes that in the minutes prior to the crash “callers to 9-1-1 reported seeing a” car similar to the one that crashed “driving erratically and weaving in and out of traffic.” The Oregon car crash threw the driver from her vehicle, leaving her lying injured in the road’s median.

Moments later another woman, accompanied by her 23-year-old daughter, stopped to help the victim, while another driver positioned his car on the road “in an attempt to keep cars from striking the three women. But a westbound Pontiac Grand Am went around that car, striking both the injured woman in the center median and the good Samaritan’s daughter and then continuing west toward St. Helen’s” where she was stopped a short time later by police.

Following-up my blog last week about Oregon child safety and the start of the school year, it is a pleasure to take note of a more upbeat story about efforts to prevent injuries to Oregon’s kids.

The Astoria publication Coast Weekend recently published details of a video and moviemaking contest for Oregon high school students with the theme “Save a friend. Work safe.” According to the newsletter, the competition “is designed to increase awareness about safety on the job for young people. Students must create a 45-second public service announcement” keyed to the contest theme. The top three entries will receive cash prizes of up to $500 with equal amounts being donated to their respective schools.

The contest is organized by the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division. Entries will be judged on how well they address the contest theme as well as on creativity and originality and on their overall production values. Entries are due by February 1, 2012. See the link below for more contest details and the official rules. The Coast Weekly article also includes a link to last year’s winning entry – a “PSA depicting an accident involving a pizza delivery driver.”

The case of Jeanette Maples, the Eugene teenager who was starved and tortured to death by her own mother, shocked much of the state. Now, it is the state itself that stands accused of complicity in the girl’s death as the subject of an Oregon wrongful death lawsuit, according to television station KVAL and the Eugene Register-Guard.

The newspaper reports that Maples’ estate is suing Oregon Child Protective Services and the state Department of Human Services, alleging that their failure to protect the teen was “a substantial factor” in her death. Maples’ mother pled guilty to murder in criminal court and was later sentenced to death. The new suit, however, “claims the State of Oregon was negligent in not preventing Maples’ death by abuse,” KVAL reports.

According to the Register-Guard, the suit also alleges that the state’s neglect continued over an extended period of time. Specifically, “that state workers failed to ‘investigate and heed’ allegations of abuse from reliable sources beginning in 2006” and that this pattern of neglect continued until Maples’ death, nearly four years later.

A recent fatal cycling accident to our north in Washington State, has prompted some careful thinking concerning the way cyclists are treated by the public policy process. In the wake of this month’s Portland bike accident that landed former star University of Oregon and NFL quarterback Joey Harrington in intensive care, this is clearly an issue that merits attention on both sides of the Columbia River.

A fascinating column published recently in the Seattle Times addresses this issue in the wake of a fatal Washington cycling accident in a busy part of Seattle. Seattle, like Portland, has a reputation for being a cyclist-friendly city. Yet a biker there died late last month while riding in a marked bike lane after an “SUV sped across traffic, slammed into him, and fled,” according to Times columnist Alan Durning.

Durning writes that car crashes killed nearly 1100 people in Idaho, Oregon and Washington during 2009 alone, adding that “car crashes are the No. 1 cause of death among American children and young adults, and the group of pedestrians most in jeopardy is seniors.” As a way of beginning to deal with these problems Durning proposes a simple public policy solution: reduce the regulatory barriers that can make it difficult for municipalities to lower speed limits in critical areas.

As the National Hockey League playoffs move toward their conclusion over the coming weeks TV viewers in Canada are being offered evidence that the league is taking its responsibilities regarding traumatic brain injuries increasingly seriously.

On the ice at the pro level, new regulations now require any player who suffers a suspected head trauma to be removed from the game immediately and to spend at least 15 minutes in a “quiet room” undergoing medical evaluations. Whether the player returns to the game or not is a decision made by the doctors on site, not the coaches or the player himself. When one considers that as recently as 20 years ago many NHL players did not even wear helmets this has to be considered significant progress.

Off the ice the league is also making an effort to set a better example, particularly where impressionable youngsters are concerned. Canadian TV viewers of the hockey playoffs are repeatedly seeing a commercial urging them to visit the website of “ThinkFirst”, which describes itself as “a National charitable organization dedicated to the prevention of brain and spinal cord injuries.” At the site visitors can watch, or download for free, a 26-minute video on preventing hockey-related brain and head injuries with a particular emphasis on injury prevention among kids. Though the site is not being promoted to American viewers it is fully accessible from this side of the border.

The City of Portland is scheduled, this week, to pay out $338,477 as part of the settlement of a lawsuit filed by an 80-year-old woman struck by a police car while crossing the street. According to an article in The Oregonian, the accident took place when the officer driving the patrol car looked away from the road to check his onboard mobile computer for messages from the police dispatcher.

The accident is a reminder of one of the loopholes in the much-talked-about Oregon distracted driving law, which went into effect nearly a year ago: the blanket exemption for on-duty law enforcement and public safety personnel. Obviously police, firefighters, EMTs and other people who protect our lives deserve our respect and support. Equally obviously, their use of computers and other on-board electronic equipment designed to help them do their jobs is a far cry from a commuter texting in downtown traffic.

That said, the suit the city has just settled is a reminder that the on-board computers that are now standard in police cars and other public service vehicles are far more complex – and potentially far more distracting – than the hand-held two-way radios of old. As The Oregonian rightly notes, “The case points to a growing tension: While police are expected to use increasing technology in the field t obtain information quicker, the distractions also have the potential to cause accidents.”

Data showing a huge jump in the number of pedestrian deaths from Oregon car accidents made the news over the weekend, only to be reinforced by the death of a 21-year-old pedestrian Monday in an Oregon fatal car accident in Newberg.

The data cited by The Oregonian last Sunday was certainly eye-opening: an 80 percent jump in the number of pedestrians killed on Oregon’s roads this year compared to the same period in 2009. “The increase this year over last year is pretty alarming,” the paper quoted Oregon State Police spokesman Lt. Gregg Hastings saying. The article went on to cite Judith Yip, who coordinates the Oregon Pedestrian Safety Program. She noted that much of the increase can be attributed to pedestrians who “just don’t realize how invisible they are.”

Still, one has to wonder about incidents like the one that took place in Newberg a day after the Oregonian piece on pedestrian safety was published. According to a report, also carried in The Oregonian, the victim was attempting to cross State Route 219 in the late afternoon when he was struck by not one but two eastbound vehicles. According to the newspaper he died at the scene of the accident before a medical evacuation helicopter could arrive to take him to a hospital.

In what may be a sign of changing national attitudes, a push by Washington lobbyists to roll back distracted driving legislation by changing the terms of debate appears to have, as the New York Times puts it, “fallen apart.” This can only be seen as good news by everyone who believes that the new Oregon distracted driving law is an important public safety measure.

The Oregon distracted driving law, which went into effect January 1 of this year, bans most drivers from talking on or texting from a handheld cellphone while driving. There are some limited exceptions for emergencies and people in certain occupations but, broadly speaking, the goal is to get Oregon drivers to put down cellphones.

Apparently it is exactly this intention at which the DC lobbyists were taking aim. As the Times reports, the now-defunct “Drive Coalition” was a lobbyist-driven effort to round up clients among cellphone and auto companies. The Times reports that the group planned oppose measures like the Oregon distracted driving statute and instead “to push the idea of broader laws that would focus on car distractions in general.” The group backed off after an angry press conference Wednesday by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood who, the paper reports, decried “an effort he said was a threat to driver safety.”