Accident; analysis and prevention
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Reliable and consistent measures of injury severity are necessary for the study of environmental, crash and personal factors involved in road traffic crashes. This study was designed to evaluate measures of injury severity derived from computerized hospital discharge records, using 3609 road crash casualties admitted to hospital in Western Australia in 1988. External cause of injury codes were used to identify injuries from road traffic crashes. ⋯ Discriminant analysis suggested that the AIS could be separated into minor and major injuries at a score of three and the Injury Severity Score at a score of nine. The measures derived from the AIS were all strongly correlated with each other and with the length of hospital stay and the dichotomized values gave similar results to the other scores when used in regression analyses of the injury experience of different types of road users. It was concluded that measures incorporating elements of both severity and number of injuries were preferable but length of hospital stay would be a suitable proxy if no other injury information was available.