Accident; analysis and prevention
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Multicenter Study
The involvement of drugs in drivers of motor vehicles killed in Australian road traffic crashes.
A multi-center case-control study was conducted on 3398 fatally-injured drivers to assess the effect of alcohol and drug use on the likelihood of them being culpable. Crashes investigated were from three Australian states (Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia). The control group of drug- and alcohol-free drivers comprised 50.1% of the study population. ⋯ Drivers positive to any psychoactive drug were significantly more likely to be culpable (OR 1.8, 95% CI 1.3-2.4). Gender differences were not significant, but differences were apparent with age. Drivers showing the highest culpability rates were in the under 25 and over 65 age groups.
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Comparative Study
Passenger seating position and the risk of passenger death or injury in traffic crashes.
To estimate the association of passenger seat position with the risk of death and serious injury for passengers in traffic crashes. ⋯ We estimated that the rear seat passenger position may reduce the risk of death in a motor vehicle crash by about 39% and reduce the risk of death or serious injury in a crash by 33%, compared with the front seat passenger position. If the associations that we report are causal, sitting in the rear seat, compared with the front seat, may prevent about 4 in 10 passenger deaths, or 3 in 10 passenger deaths and injuries, that might otherwise occur.
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In the United States, passenger vehicles are shifting from a fleet populated primarily by cars to a fleet dominated by light trucks and vans (LTVs). Because light trucks are heavier, stiffer, and geometrically more blunt than passenger cars, they pose a dramatically different type of threat to pedestrians. This paper investigates the effect of striking vehicle type on pedestrian fatalities and injuries. ⋯ The paper presents and compares pedestrian impact risk factors for sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, vans, and cars as developed from analyses of US accident statistics. Pedestrians are found to have a two to three times greater likelihood of dying when struck by an LTV than when struck by a car. Examination of pedestrian injury distributions reveals that, given an impact speed, the probability of serious head and thoracic injury is substantially greater when the striking vehicle is an LTV rather than a car.