Thanks for the lying war propaganda, MSM newspapers.
I'm glad you are tanking; then maybe this will stop happening.
"For returning vets, a tragic toll on the roads; Devastating death rate from crashes sounds the alarm at Veterans Affairs" by Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff | July 26, 2009
NORTHAMPTON - In the first years after returning from deployment, veterans of the two wars are 75 percent more likely to die in motor vehicle accidents than civilians of comparable age, race, and sex, according to a 2008 VA study. The rate for motorcycle deaths is an astounding 148 percent higher.
The tragic result is that motor vehicle crashes - which already are the top killer of Americans ages 16 to 34, according to the latest federal safety data - are killing newly returned veterans at a devastating rate. The 2008 study, which has yet to be released, analyzed fatalities through 2006.
“You have to look at the situation they’ve been in,’’ said Mel Tapper, who manages the Center for Returning Veterans, based at the VA Medical Center in Jamaica Plain. “They’ve been in an extremely tense, life-threatening situation, where there’s adrenaline that goes through people constantly.’’
Once veterans return to the safety of home and loved ones, that tension - sometimes life-saving in war, but often debilitating in peace - can continue for months or years.
In Massachusetts, car crashes have taken the lives of at least two returning veterans in the past nine months. On July 10, an Iraq veteran from East Longmeadow was killed in Andover when the driver lost control of the car in which he was riding. Mark Ecker II, 23, who lost both legs after an explosion in Ramadi, had not been wearing a seat belt.
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On Oct. 21, Boston firefighter Paul Loring, another Iraq veteran, died in a one-car accident when the vehicle he was driving struck a tree in Quincy.
These motor vehicle tragedies have not been linked to reckless behavior. But the deaths are part of the overall fatality rate for men and women returning from combat zones that has alarmed government officials. As a result, the VA has launched a safe-driving initiative in which home-bound veterans are counseled about the risks of careless driving and encouraged to be screened for risky behavior.
Such screening, however, is more easily promoted than practiced. For veterans who have recently left a war zone, making a comfortable readjustment to home life can be maddeningly elusive. “There’s no violence, no threat, no immediate danger,’’ said Kevin Lambert, a former Marine who counsels veterans at risk of suicide for the state Department of Veterans’ Services, comparing ordinary life to deployment in a war zone.
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Lambert, 26, a wounded Iraq veteran, knows the challenges firsthand. The most difficult hurdle, he said, was the unfamiliar “peacefulness’’ he encountered in the United States. “It was very hard to transition to that, because I felt there was something wrong,’’ Lambert said.
Taverna, the former Army scout, said the desk job he took back home became so boring that he would pick bar room fistfights to replace the dangerous excitement of Iraq.
The personality-altering effects of war service, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries, are known to many recent veterans at Northampton....
Right down the road.
--more--"
Same Shit, Different War
