• Traffic injury prevention · Feb 2010

    Proportion of injured drivers presenting to a tertiary care emergency department who engage in future impaired driving activities.

    • Roy Purssell, Douglas Brown, Jeffery R Brubacher, Jean Wilson, Ming Fang, Michael Schulzer, Edwin Mak, Riyad B Abu-Laban, Richard Simons, and Tristan Walker.
    • Department of Emergency Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. roy.purssell@vch.ca
    • Traffic Inj Prev. 2010 Feb 1;11(1):35-42.

    ObjectiveWe determined the rate of, and predictive factors for, subsequent impaired driving activity (IDA) by injured drivers treated in a Canadian tertiary care emergency department (ED) following a motor vehicle crash (MVC).MethodsWe retrospectively identified all drivers injured in a MVC who presented to our tertiary care, urban ED (1999-2003) and had their blood alcohol content (BAC) measured. Injured drivers were categorized by BAC: group 1, BAC = 0; group 2, 0 < BAC < or = 17.3 mM (80 mg/dL, legal limit); and group 3, BAC > 17.3 mM. IDA was defined as any of the following: a conviction for impaired driving; a 24-h or 90-day license suspension for impaired driving; involvement in alcohol-related MVC. Time to IDA following the index event between groups was compared with Kaplan-Meier survival analyses. Effects of covariates on time to IDA were analyzed using Cox proportional hazards models.ResultsDuring the study period, 1489 injured drivers met study criteria: 1171 in group 1, 51 in group 2, and 267 in group 3. During an average follow-up of 52.4 months, 82 (30.7%) group 3 drivers engaged in subsequent IDA, compared with 80 (6.8%) group 1 drivers (p < 0.0001). Youth, male gender, history of previous IDA, and the number of previous IDA events were all associated with a significant increase in subsequent IDA. A history of IDA was the strongest predictor of future IDA in group 1 (440% increase risk) and in group 3 (80% increased risk). The magnitude of BAC elevation above the legal limit was not predictive of future IDA.ConclusionsA high portion of injured impaired drivers who present to hospital engage in repeat IDA following discharge. Besides impairment at time of hospital visit, the best predictor of future IDA is a history of IDA prior to the index event.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…