Josh Hawkins/UNLV Creative Services
Dr. Deborah Kuhls, a professor of surgery at UNLV and a trauma surgeon at University Medical Center, is all too familiar with the life-altering effects that traffic crashes can cause. She’s among the state’s leading researchers studying how such crashes can be reduced in Nevada.
Sunday, Dec. 24, 2023 | 2 a.m.
As a trauma surgeon at University Medical Center, Dr. Deborah Kuhls sees the tragic results of traffic crashes in Las Vegas — from life-altering injuries to all too many deaths.
As a professor of surgery at UNLV, she is dedicated to research to help prevent those kinds of crashes and save lives.
Kuhls, medical director at UMC’s trauma intensive care unit and the chief of critical care at UNLV’s Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine, recently received a $571,279 state grant to expand her work.
“Having seen so many victims of traffic crashes over the years, even early in my career, I started to look at traffic-related crashes and how we can prevent them,” she said.
The grant from the Nevada Department of Public Safety, Office of Traffic Safety will provide Kuhls and her team of researchers additional funds to do just that.
Traffic crashes “have always been” one of the leading causes of injury or death in the United States, Kuhls said. Nevada is no stranger to vehicular crashes and dangerous driving behaviors, she added.
Almost 9,000 patients were admitted into hospitals in Nevada due to traffic injuries between 2017 and 2019, according to the July 2023 traffic study. About 71% of those patients were discharged to their home, but 22% needed skilled nursing or rehab. Three percent of them died.
Pedestrians in Nevada had a 2.5 times higher risk of dying from injuries sustained from a vehicle than drivers or occupants in vehicles involved in crashes, the study showed.
Last year alone, 416 people died from injuries in vehicular crashes, up from 349 in 2021, according to Zero Fatalities Nevada — which is different from the medical school’s traffic study. Through Nov. 30, there were 360 reported deaths from vehicular crashes this year, according to the website.
Many of these crashes, whether vehicle-on-vehicle or vehicle and pedestrian, are typically the cause of unsafe behaviors.
Speeding, aggressive driving, a lack of seat belt wearing and other types of reckless driving have become a serious concern, Kuhls said.
In 2022, Nevada ranked sixth for the highest number of confrontational drivers, and around 1.4 million citations were issued by Nevada law enforcement between 2018 and 2021, according to the medical school.
That “astoundingly high” rate of vehicular-related injuries and deaths, especially due to risky driving behavior, is why Kuhls is so passionate about continuing her traffic studies.
“I think as trauma surgeons, we realized that — I realized that — behavior was a huge component (of) who gets into a traffic crash, and obviously innocent other people are often injured or killed as well,” Kuhls said. “Through this grant’s work over the years, I think we’ve really married kind of a more individual approach … with looking at the actual data.”
Dr. Deborah Kuhls, a professor of surgery at UNLV and a trauma surgeon at University Medical Center, is all too familiar with the life-altering effects that traffic crashes can cause. She’s among the state’s leading researchers studying how such crashes can be reduced in Nevada.
Kuhls wasn’t part of the initial team that began studying Nevada’s vehicular crashes, but she took over the project in 2013 and has led it since.
Traffic studies first began at UNLV in 2002 after the university received a grant from the federal Office of Traffic Safety.
For the studies, researchers analyze medical and injury data from the state’s four trauma centers — UMC, Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center, Dignity Health St. Rose Dominican and Renown Regional Medical Center — as well as Nevada Department of Transportation crash data, statewide traffic citations, statewide driving-under-the-influence toxicology data and hospital discharge data.
They compile this data for use in quarterly distribution, specifically to the public and public officials, Kuhl said. The first Traffic Research and Education Newsletter, dubbed TREND, was released in 2011, according to the medical school.
The data has since evolved from measurements of seat belt use, cost of care from DUI and pedestrian insurance status to include other traffic safety factors such as citations issued and environmental factors.
Kuhls said the inclusion of additional elements like the citations — which were just added this past year — help with fully understanding state traffic behavior and informing legislation that could reduce the number of crashes each year.
And the data has been put to good use since the TREND reports began being released over a decade ago, Kuhls said.
During the 2023 legislative session, data from the medical school’s traffic study was used to support Senate Bill 322, also dubbed “Rex’s Law” in honor of 13-year-old Rex Patchett, who was killed in March 2022 by a speeding driver outside Mannion Middle School in Henderson.
The bill, which was pushed by Patchett’s family and signed into law by Gov. Joe Lombardo, enhanced the penalty for reckless driving from one to six years in prison, to six to 10 years if the offense was caused by excessive speeding or happened in a school or pedestrian zone.
“If we have all of those factors, those risk and protective factors that affect who gets into a crash, who’s injured, along with the actual consequences of crashes, and we try to provide information to policymakers, that can help to also prevent crashes, and that would mandate certain behaviors,” Kuhls said.
Although Kuhls said UNLV’s department of surgery was awarded money under the same grant each year, the funding has increased by over $100,000. This will allow them to expand their capability for research, switch over to a new data system and look to collect even more information on other areas relating to traffic safety and vehicular crashes.
One of those topics Kuhls is hoping to dive into soon is the mental impact of vehicular crashes on people who survive them, she said.
The new data system, she said, will better record demographics of those who end up in crashes statewide, which will allow Kuhls and her team “a much better picture of crashes throughout the state” and which populations are most at risk.
In the upcoming years, as data becomes more available, Kuhls also plans on incorporating more information on “the mental health consequences of injury” — or, how grief and post-traumatic stress disorder can affect a person after being in a crash.
But despite the changes, Kuhls’ mission remains the same: Keep the public informed and safe.
“It’s just really important to get across the message that these are not accidents,” Kuhls said. “The majority has some human behavior involved, that puts the driver of that vehicle, all their occupants and other people around them at risk of injury and death.”
