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  “I’m an emergency physician, so this is what I do.”

  Dietrich Jehle

  Professor of Emergency Medicine

By LOIS BAKER

Published: September 9, 2009

Dietrich Jehle, the UB professor of emergency medicine, who helped save lives on the scene of the six-car accident on the I-190 expressway on Sept. 3, coincidentally is particularly knowledgeable about the dangers of car crashes.

“We are truly proud of Dr. Jehle,” says David Dunn, UB vice president for health sciences. “As luck would have it, he was probably the perfect person to be one of the first on the scene. Not only is he a distinguished emergency physician, he has conducted extensive research on traffic injury. He knows what happens when a small car is involved in an accident with much larger vehicles. He went directly to the small compact car where the most seriously injured were trapped.”

Jehle conducts research at UB for the Center for Transportation Injury Research and Calspan University at Buffalo Research Center (CUBRC). He has published extensive research on auto crashes, including which seat is the safest in an accident (the middle back seat) and which passenger is likely to sustain the most injury in a roll-over (depends on the direction of the roll-over).

“I’m an emergency physician, so this is what I do,” Jehle says. “No way was I going to let that seriously injured child stay in that burning car. With the help of the iron worker, we finally were able to get him out.

“Later that evening, my wife asked me if I thought about the car exploding. I said, ‘sure,’ but I also thought of being unable to sleep for the rest of my life if I left that child in the car.”

An additional study of Jehle’s relates directly to Thursday’s accident. He found that highway speed kills, but that on interstate highways, such as the I-190, speed variance, or the difference in speed among autos, is more deadly.

Click here for an archive of stories about Jehle’s research.