• Musa Dirlik, Başak Çakır Bostancıoğlu, Tülay Elbek, Bedir Korkmaz, Füsun Çallak Kallem, and Berk Gün.
• Department of Forensic Medicine, Adnan Menderes University Faculty of Medicine, Aydın, Turkey. musadirlik@hotmail.com.
• Ulus Travma Acil Cer. 2014 Sep 1;20(5):353-8.

BackgroundIn this study, it was aimed to analyze the traffic accidents with postmortem examinations and autopsies.MethodsFrom the one thousand eight hundred and fifteen forensic autopsies, reports of 334 traffic accidents were searched. Features such as the scene of the accident, type of the accident, type of the vehicles involved in the accident, the year, season, day and hour of the accident, the positions of the victims in the traffic, concomitant orthopedic injuries, whether autopsy was performed, and cause of death were investigated.ResultsAmong the one thousand eight hundred and fifteen forensic death cases, observed cause of death was determined to be traffic accidents in 334 (18.4%) cases. Male cases accounted 84.1%, and male to female ratio was 5.3 to 1. From the reports, 32.6% of the accidents happened in summer and most commonly during holidays (33%). The rate of the accidents happened in the city center was 35.3% and 32.9% of these cases died due to pedestrian collision. Moreover, it was determined that the most injured person was the driver. Automobiles took the lead in the causes of the traffic accidents.ConclusionIt is realized that traffic accident-related deaths have a substantial place among forensic deaths and continue to be an important public health problem. It is conspicuous that improving public education on traffic safety, increasing traffic management and control measures are of great significance.

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