A retrospective analysis of chest injuries in 280 seat belt wearers

Abstract

The usefulness of seat belts is today well documented. The purpose of the present study was to analyse the factors which caused the fatal outcome of 207 seat belt wearers, a chest injury being recorded as the main cause of death. The control material consisted of 73 seat belt wearers who sustained severe chest injury in the same kind of traffic accidents. The basic material consisted of 3,468 traffic accidents investigated by the Boards of Traffic Accidents Investigation of Insurance Companies in Finland. Since 1972, the Boards have investigated accidents involving one or more victims dying within 30 days of the accident. In the group of fatally injured victims drivers outnumbered passengers statistically ( p < 0.01), this being the case especially in frontal impact collisions. In those frontal crashes the part of the car causing injury was the steering wheel in 28.6% of the cases, but in lateral collisions the injury was in 4.8% due to impact by steering wheel ( p < 0.001). In lateral impact collisions there were more fatalities compared with other directions of impact ( p < 0.001) and only 3.3% survived in the front seat on the side impact. The injury mechanism on the body was grouped as follows: deceleration, contusion, and crushing force. Crushing force was the most common mechanism leading to the fatal outcome and was statistically more common in lateral impact collisions than in other types of crashes ( p < 0.001). Improving the constructions of steering assembly and strengthening side panels of the cars can be considered one of the main priorities in the prevention of fatal chest injuries.