Revealed: The speed where a car crash becomes a fatality The head of the RPH Trauma Unit, Dr Sudhakar Rao, talks about the road accident victims he sees at the hosptial every day. JUST 10 kilometres an hour. That's what is seen as the difference between surviving or dying in a car wreck. With The Sunday Times and PerthNow launching our Summer Slowdown campaign this week, Dr Sudhakar Rao, the head of trauma at Royal Perth Hospital, believes a slight easing in speed is all you need to stay alive. So far, in just 18 days of summer, seven people have already lost their lives on WA's roads. Last summer there were 48 fatalities. "A 10km/h drop at any speed makes a big difference to the level of injury," Dr Rao said. The higher the speed, the higher the energy of the impact that goes without saying. The types of injuries that are more magnified with high speed are pretty much everything. You can multiply all the injuries by some sort of exponential factor and say that the injuries you get are very, very serious at high speed. Join PerthNow's Summer Slowdown and be vigilant behind the wheel. Once you go above 80km/h in a crash your risk of internal injuries substantially goes up, as well as head injuries. When people don't make it out of a car and into an ambulance and they die at the scene, the usual cause of death is massive internal haemorrhaging or a severe head injury. The ones that come to us and survive and die despite everything we do ... that's usually due to massive internal injuries. Dr Rao admitted those injured in crashes involving speeds above 100km/h were always fighting for their lives. But he said some injuries were "less likely" to occur in crashes at low speed. "Internal injuries to the lungs and organs and inside the abdomen, which are the (injuries) that bleed and kill people, they are less likely to occur under 60km/h or 50km/h," he said. Dr Rao's message to all drivers, not just this summer, but at all times is a simple one: Watch your speed, wear seatbelts in the car and your helmets on bikes. "Use all your safety features and buy a vehicle that has a safe rating," he said. If you drive at a lower speed too your chances of having a crash are lowered but if you do have a crash your risk of serious injury is much less also. To keep the safe driving message at the forefront of drivers' minds, The Sunday Times and PerthNow will continue to publicise our Summer Slowdown message for the next three months as a constant reminder to West Aussies to be vigilant behind the wheel.