Postmortem injury quantification for the fatally injured cyclists in the Osijek–Baranja county over a 21-year period

Abstract

Objective The objective of this study was to quantify injuries in fatal cyclists’ traffic crashes by performing injury analysis and determine injury trends as well as main epidemiological data of the cyclists’ fatalities. Methods The study was organized as a cross-sectional retrospective study, which included 125 cyclists’ fatalities autopsied at the Clinical Department of Pathology and Forensic Medicine, Clinical Hospital Center Osijek from 1998 to 2018. We applied The Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS©) classification for all fatally injured cyclists in traffic crashes and determined the severity of injuries by body region from the description of injuries reported in the autopsy report. Results The majority of victims in our study (80%) were male and older than 45 (80.8%). A significant majority of cyclists (78.4%) were not wearing a helmet at the time of the fatal crash. For the rest of the cyclists (21.6%) we were not able to establish if they were wearing a helmet at the time of the crash based on the traffic police reports. Most of those who died on the spot or during transport had severe injuries to three or more ISS body regions (26/46 = 54%) and the majority of deceased cyclist had severe injuries to the head and brain, regardless of the time of death. Older cyclists died on the spot with lower injury severity scores (ISS). Conclusions Measures against dangerous cycling behavior such as driving under the influence of alcohol and driving without the helmet could lead to reduction of fatal, and probably, non-fatal bicycle crashes. We believe that policy change regarding mandatory helmet usage is of upmost importance. Injury analysis can provide us with valuable information regarding where the focus of treatment should be among severely injured cyclists as well as where the prevention should be targeted. Further injury analysis studies are needed, with studies including both fatal and non-fatal crashes. The Abbreviated Injury Scale represents a valuable system for describing (coding) and quantifying the severity of injuries during autopsies.