Motor vehicle accident epidemiology and demographics
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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1] Associate Editor(s)-in-Chief: Vishnu Vardhan Serla M.B.B.S. [2]
Epidemiology and Demographics
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Worldwide it was estimated in 2004 that 1.2 million people were killed (2.2% of all deaths) and 50 million more were injured in motor vehicle collisions.[2][3] India recorded 105,000 traffic deaths in a year, followed by China with over 96,000 deaths.[4] This makes motor vehicle collisions the leading cause of injury death among children worldwide 10 – 19 years old (260,000 children die a year, 10 million are injured)[5] and the sixth leading preventable cause of death in the United States[6] (45,800 people died and 2.4 million were injured in 2005).[7] In Canada they are the cause of 48% of severe injuries.[8]
Legal Consequences
In the United States, individuals involved in motor vehicle accidents can be held financially liable for the consequences of an accident, including property damage, injuries to passengers and drivers, and fatalities. Because these costs can easily exceed the annual income of the average driver, most US states require drivers to carry liability insurance to cover these potential costs. However, in the event of severe injuries or fatalities, victims may seek damages in civil court, often for well in excess of the value of insurance.
Additionally, drivers who are involved in a collision frequently receive one or more traffic citations, usually directly addressing any material violations such as speeding, failure to obey a traffic control device, or driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. In the event of a fatality, a charge of vehicular homicide is occasionally prosecuted, especially in cases involving alcohol.
Convictions for traffic violations are usually penalized with fines, and for more severe offenses, the suspension or revocation of driving privileges. Convictions for alcohol offenses generally result in the revocation or long term suspension of the driver's license, and sometimes jail time and/or mandatory alcohol rehabilitation.
Due to increase in availability of cable news and internet news, exposure to such legal actions has increased in recent years, specifically with coverage of cases and class action suits concerning SUV rollovers and recent incidents of sudden acceleration crashes highlighted by the 2010 Toyota Recall. Increased exposure has led to larger class action suits, and automobile owners' ability to link their collision causes and issues to ones in other regions has spread knowledge of external causes.
Crash Rates
The safety performance of roadways are almost always reported as rates. That is, some measure of harm (deaths, injuries, or number of crashes) divided by some measure of exposure to the risk of this harm. Rates are used so the safety performance of different locations can be compared, and to prioritize safety improvements.
Common rates related to road traffic fatalities include the number of deaths per capita, per registered vehicle, per licensed driver, or per vehicle mile or kilometer traveled. Simple counts are almost never used. The annual count of fatalities is a rate, namely, the number of fatalities per year.
There is no one rate that is superior to others in any general sense. The rate to be selected depends on the question being asked – and often also on what data are available. What is important is to specify exactly what rate is measured and how it relates to the problem being addressed. Some agencies concentrate on crashes per total vehicle distance traveled. Others combine rates. The U.S. state of Iowa, for example, selects high accident locations based on a combination of crashes per million miles traveled, crashes per mile per year, and value loss (crash severity).[9]
Fatality
The definition of a road-traffic fatality varies from country to country. In the United States, the definition used in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS)[10] run by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is a person who dies within 30 days of a crash on a US public road involving a vehicle with an engine, the death being the result of the crash. In the U.S., therefore, if a driver has a non-fatal heart attack that leads to a road-traffic crash that causes death, that is a road-traffic fatality. However, if the heart attack causes death prior to the crash, then that is not a road-traffic fatality.
The definition of a road accident fatality can change with time in the same country. For example, fatality was defined in France as a person who dies in the 6 days (pre 2005) after the accident and was subsequently changed to the 30 days (post 2005) after the accident.[11]
References
- ↑ "WHO Disease and injury country estimates". World Health Organization. 2004. Retrieved Nov. 11, 2009. Check date values in:
|accessdate=(help) - ↑ "WHO | World report on road traffic injury prevention".
- ↑ "www.searo.who.int" (PDF). World Health Organization.
- ↑ ´"Nearly 300 Indians die daily on roads, shows report". Business Standard. August 17, 2009.
- ↑ "BBC NEWS | Special Reports | UN raises child accidents alarm". BBC News. 2008-12-10. Retrieved 2010-05-25.
- ↑ Mokdad AH, Marks JS, Stroup DF, Gerberding JL (2004). "Actual causes of death in the United States, 2000" (PDF). JAMA. 291 (10): 1238–45. doi:10.1001/jama.291.10.1238. PMID 15010446. Unknown parameter
|month=ignored (help) - ↑ "Report on Injuries in America :: Making Our World Safer".
- ↑ "Motor Vehicle Collisions Most Frequent Cause of Severe Injuries".
- ↑ Hallmark, Shauna, Evaluation of the Iowa DOT's Safety Improvement Candidate List Process, Center for Transportation Research and Education, Iowa State university, June 2002 http://www.intrans.iastate.edu/reports/SafetyCandidate.pdf
- ↑ "FARS". Fars.nhtsa.dot.gov. Retrieved 2011-11-13.
- ↑ International Road Assistance Programme - International Transport Statistics Database
