Abstract
Background: The purpose of this study was to assess the risk of motor-vehicle pregnant driver crashes in Pennsylvania using vital statistics linked to police and ambulance reports. This was supplemented with a review of national age and sex specific crash and fertility data to put this risk into perspective and rank the likelihood for pregnancy-related crashes in other states. Methods: Motor vehicle police crash reports from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation were probabilistically linked to four years of birth and fetal death data and five years of infant death records and ambulance reports. State specific motor-vehicle traffic injury rates (fatal and non-fatal) were compared to birth rates, by age, for women ages 15 - 34. Results: 5929 (1.1%) of the women with a birth or fetal death linked to a police reported motor vehicle driver crash during pregnancy. One-third (32.5%) of these crashes resulted in minor maternal injuries and 7.5% resulted in moderate to fatal maternal injuries. Crashes were evenly distributed across gestational ages. Young drivers (20 - 24) were at highest risk. Police reported non-belt use was 10%. Conclusions: This study quantifies the risk of motor vehicle crashes during pregnancy in Pennsylvania and offers a perspective on potential variations in other states. Pregnancy related crashes occur at a higher rate than infant related crashes with a concomitant threat to the fetus and new-born not usually tracked within current crash data systems.
Highlights
As the infectious scourges of childbirth during the early part of the 20th century yielded to advances in modern health care, women of reproductive age began to take to the road in motor vehicles as never before
The purpose of this study was to assess the risk of motor-vehicle pregnant driver crashes in Pennsylvania using vital statistics linked to police and ambulance reports
To identify cases for which the crash occurred during pregnancy, the following case selection was applied: If the gestational age at birth or fetal death was available, we looked back in time for a crash event within the gestational age plus one week
Summary
As the infectious scourges of childbirth during the early part of the 20th century yielded to advances in modern health care, women of reproductive age began to take to the road in motor vehicles as never before. The ubiquity of motor-vehicle travel by pregnant women, in combination with their crash risk, has led to reports from national sample surveys that about 2% - 3% of all live births in the U.S are annually exposed inutero to a police-reported crash [8]. The purpose of this study was to assess the risk of motor-vehicle pregnant driver crashes in Pennsylvania using vital statistics linked to police and ambulance reports. This was supplemented with a review of national age and sex specific crash and fertility data to put this risk into perspective and rank the likelihood for pregnancy-related crashes in other states. Pregnancy related crashes occur at a higher rate than infant related crashes with a concomitant threat to the fetus and newborn not usually tracked within current crash data systems
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