Traffic-related Incidents Research Articles

Measuring Cybercrime in Calls for Police Service

Conventional police databases contain much information on cybercrime, but extracting it remains a practical challenge. This is because these databases rarely contain labels that could be used to automatically retrieve all cybercrime incidents. In this article, we present a supervised machine learning method for extracting cybercrime incidents in calls for police service datasets. Data from the Korean National Police (2020, 9 months, N = 15 million call logs) is used for the demonstration. We combined methods of keyword query selection, minority oversampling, and majority voting techniques to develop a classifier. Three classification techniques, including Naïve Bayes, linear SVM, and kernel SVM, were tested, and the kernel model was chosen to build the final model (accuracy, 93.4%; F1-score, 92.4). We estimate that cybercrime only represents 4.6% of the cases in the selected dataset (excluding traffic-related incidents), but that it can be prevalent with some crime types. We found, for example, that about three quarters (76%) of all fraud incidents have a cyber dimension. We conclude that the cybercrime classification method proposed in this study can support further research on cybercrime and that it offers considerable advantages over manual or keyword-based approaches.

The association between health literacy and pedestrian safety behavior among adults: a cross-sectional study

IntroductionPedestrians are considered the most vulnerable and complex road users as human behavior constitutes one of the fundamental reasons for traffic-related incidents involving pedestrians. However, the role of health literacy as a predictor of Pedestrian safety behavior remains underexplored. Therefore, the current study was designed to examine the level of health literacy and its association with the safety behavior of adult pedestrians in the city of Tabriz.MethodsThis cross-sectional analytical study was conducted among individuals aged 18 to 65 years in the metropolitan area of Tabriz from January to April 2023. Data were collected using the HELIA standard questionnaire (Health Literacy Instrument for adults), comprising 33 items across 5 domains (access, reading, understanding, appraisal, decision-making and behavior), as well as the Pedestrian Behavior Questionnaire (PBQ) consisting of 29 items. Data were analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistics (independent t-tests, ANOVA, and Pearson correlation coefficient) via SPSS-22 software.ResultsBased on the results, 94% (376 individuals) had excellent health literacy levels, and their safety behavior scores were at a good level. Health literacy and safety behavior were higher among the age group of 31 to 45 years, women, married individuals, those who read books, and individuals with higher education. However, safety behavior showed no significant association with education level (P > 0.05). There was a significant and positive relationship between health literacy and all its domains and pedestrian safety behavior (r = 0.369, P < 0.001).ConclusionThis study underscores the significant impact of health literacy on pedestrians’ safety behavior. The findings reveal that higher levels of health literacy are associated with better safety behavior among individuals aged 18 to 63. Demographic factors such as age, gender, marital status, and education level also play a role in shaping both health literacy and safety behavior. By recognizing these relationships, interventions can be tailored to improve health literacy levels and promote safer pedestrian practices, ultimately contributing to a healthier and safer community in Tabriz city.

Pediatric renal trauma: 17 years of experience at a major Scandinavian trauma center

BackgroundChildren are at increased risk of renal injuries from blunt trauma due to their anatomic constitution. The kidney is injured in 5–20% of pediatric patients with blunt abdominal trauma. During...

PIPTO: Precise Inertial-Based Pipeline for Threshold-Based Fall Detection Using Three-Axis Accelerometers.

After traffic-related incidents, falls are the second cause of human death, presenting the highest percentage among the elderly. Aiming to address this problem, the research community has developed methods built upon different sensors, such as wearable, ambiance, or hybrid, and various techniques, such as those that are machine learning- and heuristic based. Concerning the models used in the former case, they classify the input data between fall and no fall, and specific data dimensions are required. Yet, when algorithms that adopt heuristic techniques, mainly using thresholds, are combined with the previous models, they reduce the computational cost. To this end, this article presents a pipeline for detecting falls through a threshold-based technique over the data provided by a three-axis accelerometer. This way, we propose a low-complexity system that can be adopted from any acceleration sensor that receives information at different frequencies. Moreover, the input lengths can differ, while we achieve to detect multiple falls in a time series of sum vector magnitudes, providing the specific time range of the fall. As evaluated on several datasets, our pipeline reaches high performance results at 90.40% and 91.56% sensitivity on MMsys and KFall, respectively, while the generated specificity is 93.96% and 85.90%. Lastly, aiming to facilitate the research community, our framework, entitled PIPTO (drawing inspiration from the Greek verb "πι´πτω", signifying "to fall"), is open sourced in Python and C.

Prevalence and factors associated with ever had road traffic accidents among drivers in Hargeisa city, Somaliland, 2022

Road traffic accidents (RTAs) are a major cause of morbidity in Somaliland. This study aimed to determine the prevalence and factors associated with traffic-related incidents in Hargeisa city. A cross-sectional study was conducted between January and March 2022, utilizing a mixed approach involving quantitative and qualitative research approaches. Key informant interviews were conducted with 15 government officials, and structured questionnaires were administered to 387 drivers. Cluster sampling and purposive sampling were employed to select drivers and government officials, respectively. Data collection was performed using the Kobo Collect application, followed by cleaning and analysis using IBM SPSS version 25. Descriptive statistics, binary logistic regression, and chi-square tests were utilized for data analysis. The findings revealed an increasing trend of RTAs in Somaliland over the past 11 years (2011–2021). Moreover, the prevalence of RTAs in the past two years alone was determined to be 28.17% (CI: 23.67, 32.63). Factors significantly associated with RTAs in the research area included the type of vehicle, particularly Minibus (AOR = 3.249, CI: 1.022, 10.322) and Vitz (AOR = 2.325, CI: 1.092, 5.494), encountering aggressive behavior from other drivers (AOR = 1.790, CI: 1.013, 3.162), vehicles less than 4 years (AOR = 0.446, CI: 0.258, 0.771), traffic law violations (AOR = 2.726, CI: 1.296, 5.735), and the presence of traffic campaigns (AOR = 0.465, CI: 0.236, 0.917). The study recommends increasing awareness of RTAs among drivers and pedestrians, regular vehicle maintenance checks, enforcement of traffic laws, and increased police presence in road management to reduce fatalities associated with RTAs.

Collision Prediction Based on Vehicular Communication System

Road traffic accidents are one of the leading causes of mortality globally. Reducing the number of traffic-related incidents has become a serious socio-economic and public health problem, given the ever-increasing number of cars on the road. As a result, this paper proposes an intelligent vehicle prediction communication mechanism that alerts drivers to any autos that may be overtaking or bypassing the targeted vehicle. The primary goal of this paper is to leverage modern Internet of Things (IoT) and wireless sensor technologies to predict any potential accident that may occur as a result of car accidents. This paper proposes the Collision Prediction of a Moving Vehicle (CPMV) system. The information acquired by CPMV will alert the driver to divert the vehicle in a reasonable amount of time before any harm occurs. It redirects the inbound object that emitted the Ultrasound signal which was received by the vehicle, to a safe location. The proposed system predicts collision between vehicles through Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, using a set of sensors with a precision of 360 degrees and a distance of collision prediction of one meter and at a speed of 200-300 revolutions per minute. The python programming language was utilized to code the programs that control the vehicle during the implementation of this project. The Raspberry Pi 4 is utilized as the controller to examine the vehicle’s spatial data. The test results showed that using this application to deal with an approaching object can be a successful strategy in the three proposed scenarios at different angles and directions. Index Terms— collision prediction, collision avoidance, Internet of Things (IoT), Raspberry Pi, vehicle communication.

Differences in characteristics between patients ≥ 65 and < 65 years of age with orthopaedic injuries after severe trauma

AimMany trauma patients have associated orthopaedic injuries at admission. The existing literature regarding orthopaedic trauma often focuses on single injuries, but there is a paucity of information that gives an overview of this group of patients. Our aim was to describe the differences in characteristics between polytrauma patients ≥ 65 and < 65 years of age suffering orthopaedic injuries.MethodsPatients registered in the Norwegian Trauma Registry (NTR) with an injury severity score (ISS) > 15 and orthopaedic injuries, who were admitted to Haukeland University Hospital in 2016–2018, were included. Data retrieved from the patients’ hospital records and NTR were analysed. The patients were divided into two groups based on age.ResultsThe study comprised 175 patients, of which 128 (73%) and 47 (27%) were aged < 65 (Group 1) and ≥ 65 years (Group 2), respectively. The ISS and the new injury severity score (NISS) were similar in both groups. The dominating injury mechanism was traffic-related and thoracic injury was the most common location of main injury in both groups. The groups suffered a similar number of orthopaedic injuries. A significantly higher proportion of Group 1 underwent operative treatment for their orthopaedic injuries than in Group 2 (74% vs. 53%). The mortality in Group 2 was significantly higher than that in Group 1 (15% vs. 3%). In Group 2 most deaths were related to traffic injuries (71%). High energy falls and traffic-related incidents caused the same number of deaths in Group 1. In Group 1 abdominal injuries resulted in most deaths, while head injuries was the primary reason for deaths in Group 2.ConclusionsAlthough the ISS and NISS were similar, mortality was significantly higher among patients aged ≥ 65 years compared to patients < 65 years of age. The younger age group underwent more frequently surgery for orthopaedic injuries than the elderly. There may be multiple reasons for this difference, but our study does not have sufficient data to draw any conclusions. Future studies may provide a deeper understanding of what causes treatment variation between age groups, which would hopefully help to further develop strategies to improve outcome for the elderly polytrauma patient.

Relationship between Injuries and Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Population-Based Study with Long-Term Follow-Up in Taiwan.

Objective: To investigate the association between various injuries and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and distinguish ADHD from non-ADHD with regards to risk of various injuries among children in Taiwan. Method: Using the data from the National Health Insurance Research Database, we selected a total of 1802 subjects under the age of 18 who were diagnosed with ADHD as well as an additional 7208 subjects as a comparison group. Results: Compared with children who were not diagnosed with ADHD, children diagnosed with ADHD were more likely to intentionally injure themselves. During the school year, ADHD children were injured less frequently than were non-ADHD children on traffic-related incidents. The adjusted hazard ratio of injury for the ADHD children was 2.493 times higher than that of comparison subjects. The ADHD children had a greater length of stay and medical cost when compared to those of the non-ADHD children. Age showed a significant inverse relationship with injury. Among the ADHD children, the injury rate was evidently higher for the low-income group than for the non-low-income group. Conclusions: Age, cause of injuries, low-income household status, and school season all have a significant connection to the risk of injury for ADHD children.

CycleGuard

Every year 41,000 cyclists die in road traffic-related incidents worldwide [47]. One of the most startling and infuriating conflicts that cyclists experience is the so-called "right hook". It refers to a vehicle striking a cyclist heading in the same direction by turning right into the cyclist. To prevent such a crash, this work presents CycleGuard, an acoustic-based collision detection system using smartphones. It is composed of a cheap commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) portable speaker that emits imperceptible high-frequency acoustic signals and a smartphone for reflected signal reception and analysis. Since received acoustic signals bear rich information of their reflecting objects, CycleGuard applies advanced acoustic ranging techniques to extract those information for traffic analysis. Cyclists are alerted if any pending right hook crashes are detected. Real-time alerts ensure that cyclists have sufficient time to react, apply brakes, and eventually avoid the hazard. To validate the efficacy of CycleGuard, we implement a proof-of-concept prototype and carry out extensive in-field experiments under a broad spectrum of settings. Results show that CycleGuard achieves up to 95% accuracy in preventing right hook crashes and is robust to various scenarios. It is also energy-friendly to run on battery-powered smartphones.

Safe Bicycle Lane Design Principles: Responding to Cycling Needs in Cities during COVID and Beyond

Cycling has become a popular, resilient and reliable travel option during the pandemic in cities around the globe. The implementation of emergent, or pop-up, bike lanes has received an overwhelming response since early 2020 and has also created a growing desire for safe and efficient bicycle infrastructure. Between March and July 2020, 394 cities, states and countries reported interventions that reallocated street space for people to cycle and walk more easily, directly and safely. This shift to cycling comes at a perfect time when cities have been making efforts to meet greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. Pop-up bike lanes are typically implemented with temporary materials to segregate a traffic lane for the use of cyclists only. Despite this initial temporary condition, any new cycling infrastructure must be designed and implemented thoughtfully and to the highest standards to reduce or eliminate risks that cyclists face during trips, especially novice cyclists who might be biking in the city for the first time. When a crash occurs between a vehicle and a bicycle, it’s the cyclist who is most likely to be injured. According to the WHO, every year 41,000 cyclists die in road traffic-related incidents worldwide, representing 3% of global road traffic deaths. Temporary and quickly designed bike lanes should not compromise on safety. Bike lanes that are deployed now may have a significant impact on travel patterns and safety in cities for years to come, especially as the broad range of temporary materials available can be rapidly installed yet offer a semipermanent solution. For this reason, it is important to get the design and planning right. And right means safe. This guidance equips government agencies, designers, and civil society organizations that are participating in the health crisis response with an understanding of how to protect cyclists through safe and appropriate design. Cities are investing considerable effort and resources to implement safe cycling lanes under very challenging conditions, and this energy should not be wasted. The guidance provided here is based on the broad experience of the global team of authors, led by the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities in collaboration with the Dutch Cycling Embassy, the League of American Bicyclists, Urban Cycle Planning (Denmark), and Asplan Viak (Norway).

Seasonal patterns of traumatic brain injury deaths due to traffic-related incidents in the Slovak Republic

Objective: Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBIs) are an important type of injury in terms of both morbidity and mortality. Road Traffic Incidents are one of the most frequent causes of TBI. This analysis seeks to quantify the number of such injuries occurring in the Slovak Republic, and examine patterns of TBI according to mode of transport and seasonality.Methods: Data concerning total numbers of TBIs occurring from the years 1996–2015 were obtained from the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic. The events caused by road incidents were examined separately according the external cause stated on death certification. Events were classified into seasons according to the month of death. Summary statistics were produced concerning numbers of deaths according to sex, mode of transport and season. Analyses were performed to examine trends in TBI by season and type of road user.Results: During a period of 20 years from 1996, there were 17,047 recorded deaths involving TBI in the Slovak Republic. Of these, 5,370 were caused by road traffic incidents (RTIs). Age standardized rates tended to decrease from 8.3/100,000/year (1996) to 2.5/100,000/year (2015). Males made up approximately 79% of road traffic-caused TBIs. Summer and autumn showed significantly more events than any other season, with motorcyclists and cyclists in particular being more frequently injured at this time of year.Conclusions: The results show that Slovakia, like many countries, suffers a considerable burden of TBI and that RTIs are a major contributor to this, especially among young adults. Rates of TBI vary by season in Slovakia, and users of different modes of transport appear more or less likely to suffer such injury during different seasons. Considerable variability in rates of injury exists between road users and times of year. Improved understanding of the timing and sufferers of injuries may allow better planning of response and care services. Further research into transport modes and policies aimed at safer driving should be explored.

Pedestrian Involved Road Traffic Accidents – Case study in Kandy town, Sri Lanka

Background: It is a known fact that road traffic accidents are responsible for nearly 1.3 million deaths and another 50 million injuries in a year around the globe. Depending on the economic development of the country, victim category may change. In countries like Sri Lanka Vulnerable Road Users (VRU) are more susceptible for road traffic accidents. According to police records pedestrian involved accidents were top the list among other victim categories up to 2015. At present motor cycle riders are recorded as the highest number of victims due to road traffic accidents and pedestrians are at the second place. This paper is about pedestrians involved road traffic accidents reported to Kandy Police station in Sri Lanka to investigate and report a comparison of accidents recorded. Data Collection By law it is mandatory to report all the road traffic accidents to the police station concerned. For this study, road traffic accidents reported to Kandy police station during the period 29.08.2017 to 31.12.2018 were considered. Kandy is the second largest city in Sri Lanka and Kandy has nearly 10% of total traffic related incidents reporting compared to rest of the Country. As explained by Ming Sun et al it is very important pay detailed information about the pedestrian involved accidents to find an acceptable solution to ensure their safety. As a start, summary of accident categories are summarized in the table 1. Table 1: Summary of victim categories reported to Kandy Police Station Severity Gender of the Victim Female Male Grand Total Pedestrian Others Pedestrian Others Fatal 13 2 10 10 35 Grievous 30 19 36 63 148 Grand Total 43 21 46 73 183 According to the table 1, it is evident that pedestrians are highly vulnerable to road traffic accidents in the study area concerned. Further, Table 2 is representation of the same data set in percentages. Table 2 : Percentages of road traffic accidents for Pedestrians and others Pedestrian Others Pedestrian Others Fatal 37.14% 5.71% 28.57% 28.57% 100.00% Grievous 20.27% 12.84% 24.32% 42.57% 100.00% It is important to check whether the accidents are prominent in weekdays or weekends. Table 3 is a summary of accidents summarized according to the day of the week; Table 3 Accident variation according to the day of the week Pedestrian Involved accident Other Accidents Weekdays 70 70 Weekends 19 23 Accident / day (Weekday) 14 14 Accident/ Day (Weekend) 9.5 11.5 According to the dataset considered, there is no difference of accidents per day for weekdays for pedestrian involved and others. But for Weekends, there is a difference of accidents per day on weekends. This may be due to more pedestrians travel during weekdays due to official commitments, schooling etc. Table4. Vehicles involved in Accidents Vehicle Category Victim Category Pedestrian others Motor cycle 31 17 Three wheelers 9 37 Other Vehicles 49 39 Grand Total 89 93 According to the table 4, Motor Cycles and Three wheelers are responsible for most of the Pedestrian involved accidents. Since Motor cycles and three wheelers also categorized as vulnerable road users similar to pedestrians, they should be educated about the importance of sharing facilities with their fellow road users. Table 5 Accident locations Female Male Pedestrian Others Pedestrian Others Fatal Pedestrian crossing 6 0 2 0 others 7 2 8 10 Grievous Pedestrian crossing 9 0 11 1 Others 21 19 25 62 Grand Total 43 21 46 73 as per the information collected and analyzed, pedestrian involved accidents are high at pedestrians crossings compared to other locations. It is a known fact that pedestrian movements, especially across roads are higher at pedestrian crossings, but making such places safer also an important responsibility of the authorities. Conclusion: Pedestrian involved accidents are at a very high percentage. This may be because of low property damage and minor injury relate accidents also considered. Due to various uncertainties and possible underreporting, only fatal accidents and accidents categories as grievous are considered. According to the dataset considered, pedestrians are at high risk on roads compared to other road users. Main culprits in making pedestrian related accidents are other groups of vulnerable road users namely Motorcycle riders and Three-wheeler drivers. Pedestrian related accidents are more prominent during weekends compared to other victim categories.

Twitter Analysis for Intelligent Transportation

Abstract The amount of data available online has grown enormously over the last decade as a result of the rapid growth of smartphone users and the availability of communication applications. Due to the anonymity and instantaneous nature of social media broadcasting compared to conventional attitudinal survey methods, social media mining is becoming popular for complementing traditional traffic detection methods due to its accessibility in reaching a large population and the opportunities for reflecting the true and immediate behaviour of participants for free. This study presents a framework for Arabic Twitter content analysis to gain transportation insight. The study is done with a dataset of more than 1 million tweets collected within 3 months. The proposed model comprises three main components: data acquisition, data analysis and the reverse geotagging scheme (RGS). The RGS tackles the problem of lack of location information in the tweets. Results show that 13% of the dataset reports traffic-related incidents with an overall precision of 55% and 87% for incidents identification prediction without and with reverse geotagging, respectively. This proves the efficiency of the developed analyser in identifying tweets on transportation and the potential of the RGS in defining the location of tweets with no registered location information.

The Hybrid Electronic Medical Registry Allows Benchmarking of Quality of Trauma Care: A Five-Year Temporal Overview of the Trauma Burden at a Major Trauma Centre in South Africa.

This study is a five-year follow-up of previously published review of the trauma workload at our institution. Itaims to provide evidence about the quality of trauma care delivered by a major academic trauma service in South Africa to provide a temporal analysis of trauma trends in the city of Pietermaritzburg. All trauma patients admitted by the Pietermaritzburg Metropolitan Trauma Service (PMTS) for the period December 2012-April 2018 were retrieved from the Hybrid Electronic Medical Registry (HEMR) for analysis. Over the five-year period, a total of 8722 trauma patients were admitted to Grey's Hospital. There were 7242 (83.0%) males. The average age was 29.66 years. A total of 1719 (19.7%) patients less than 19 years of age, 377 (4.3%) older than 60 years of age and 1480 (17.0%) female patients were admitted following trauma. Table3 breaks down the mechanism of trauma. A total of 5027 patients sustained blunt trauma (57.6%), and 3334 (38.5%) sustained penetrating trauma. A total of 4808 patients sustained intentional trauma implying that 55.1% of all trauma was secondary to grievous bodily harm or assault either in the form of a stab wound or GSW or of an assault. There was a total of 2232 road traffic-related incidents, of which 37.9% (845) were pedestrian victims. The mortality rate for all trauma admissions was 4.5% (396). Of these 396 deaths, 64 (16.2%) were classified at the morbidity and mortality conference as being avoidable. The HEMR has allowed us to track the burden of trauma presenting to our institution over a five-year period. This confirms previous studies over shorter time periods from our institution. The pattern of trauma has remained consistent, and the previously described high levels show no sign of decreasing. Interventions to try and reduce this burden are urgently required.

Developing an Optimized UI for Traffic Incident Managers

Traffic Incident Managers (TIMs) coordinate first responders and help resolve traffic-related incidents. Currently, some use over fifteen different software applications with unique functionalities across three monitors to manage incidents, leading to redundant data entry, unnecessary task switching, and delayed responses. 40 hours of TIMs’ screens were recorded during their normal work hours at the Iowa Department of Transportation (DoT). The resulting task analysis from these videos greatly influenced the design of a simplified, web-based, user interface (UI) prototype. The new UI offers a 42.9% reduction in the steps required to manage an incident by combining the functionality of the fifteen different applications used in the existing system into a single, structured UI. This research approach offers a UI model to other DoTs that can lead to faster and more effective incident management.

UNIETD – Assessment of Third Party Data as Information Source for Drivers and Road Operators

The paper deals with the assessment of third party data such as crowd sourced/social media and floating vehicle data as information source for road operators in addition to traditional infrastructure-based techniques. For purposes of quality assessment of different types of data and available ground truths existing test/evaluation methodologies have been assessed. A new methodology has been designed for assessment of speeds and travel times using normalized (between 0 and 1) quality indicators that can distinguish between “detection rate” and “false alarm rate” concepts. In terms of harvesting social media the relevance of social media content has been assessed against a range of traffic management requirements. Furthermore the level of content that will be available has been estimated as well as commercial sources and business models for road authorities. Analyses cover unstructured data from Twitter and Facebook both historical data and three months of contemporary data. In addition surveys are conducted in England and Austria to retrieve information from the public in terms of which social media platforms are commonly used to share information about traffic related incidents.

Physical Layer Aspects of Information Exchange in the NOTICE Architecture

Recently, Yan et al. [1] introduced NOTICE, a scalable, secure and privacy-aware architecture for the notification of traffic-related incidents, such as congestion and other similar events. NOTICE uses belts of piezo-electric elements embedded in the highways to detect variations in the characteristics of traffic flow. NOTICE uses very short-range wireless communications between vehicles and belts. In turn, these very short-range communications impose constraints on the time available for connection establishment and data exchange. While understanding the physical layer requirements for communication is key to a successful implementation of NOTICE, these requirements were not specifically addressed in [1]. The main goal of this work is to investigate physical layer requirements for successful communication in the NOTICE architecture. Our main contribution is to study the probabilities of establishing the wireless link and of successfully exchanging information between a belt and a vehicle passing over it. We derive analytical expressions for these probabilities as functions of several parameters such as the time available for handshaking/information exchange, average speed of the vehicle, data rate and amount of information to be exchanged between the vehicle and belt, and we evaluate their values for specific parameters corresponding to practical scenarios. Our results indicate that inexpensive short-range ZigBee radios, when combined with probabilistic data collection, are good candidates for the physical layer of NOTICE.

Burden of traumatic injuries in Saudi Arabia: lessons from a major trauma registry in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVESIn Saudi Arabia (SA), injuries are the second leading cause of death; however, little is known about their frequencies and outcomes. Trauma registries play a major role in measuring the burden on population health. This study aims to describe the population of the only hospital-based trauma registry in the country and highlight challenges and potential opportunities to improve trauma data collection and research in SA.DESIGN AND SETTINGSUsing data between 2001 and 2010, this retrospective study included patients from a large trauma center in Riyadh, SA.PATIENTS AND METHODSA staff nurse utilized a structured checklist to gather information on patients’ demographic, physiologic, anatomic, and outcome variables. Basic descriptive statistics by age group (≤14 vs >14 years) were calculated, and differences were assessed using student t and chi-square tests. In addition, the mechanism of injury and the frequency of missing data were evaluated.RESULTS10 847 patients from the trauma registry were included. Over 9% of all patients died either before or after being treated at the hospital. Patients who were older than 14 years of age (more likely to be male) sustained traffic-related injuries and died in the hospital as compared to patients who were younger than or equal to years of age. Deceased patients were severely injured as measured by injury severity score and Glasgow Coma Scale (P<.001). Overall, the most frequent type of injury was related to traffic (52.0%), followed by falls (23.4%). Missing values were mostly prevalent in traffic-related variables, such as seatbelt use (70.2%).CONCLUSIONThis registry is a key step toward addressing the burden of injuries in SA. Improved injury classification using the International Classification of Disease-external cause codes may improve the quality of the registry and allow comparison with other populations. Most importantly, injury prevention in SA requires further investment in data collection and research to improve outcomes.

Impact of Abandoned and Disabled Vehicles on Freeway Incident Duration

AbstractIt is common to find a vehicle left on the shoulder, median, gore area, or on the travel lane for certain period of time. Experience from the state of Tennessee has shown that 78% of the freeway traffic-related incidents are attributable to disabled and abandoned vehicles. It is hypothesized that the longer the vehicle is left unattended within the right of way, the higher the probability of new incidents and secondary crashes. This paper utilized 2004–2010 freeway incident data in Tennessee to evaluate the effect of the length of incident durations caused by disabled and abandoned vehicles. Analysis evaluated the effect of these incidents with respect to roadway location, queue lengths, weather conditions, towing times, lane closure, and the source of incident notification. Temporal factors, including the spectra of the time of the day, the day of the week, and the seasons of the year were evaluated with respect to the number of incidents and incident durations. More disabled and abandoned vehicl...

The association between motor vehicle injuries and health-related quality of life: a longitudinal study of a population-based sample in the United States

As many as 3 million US residents are injured in traffic-related incidents every year leaving many victims with disabling conditions. To date, limited numbers of studies have examined the effects of traffic-related injuries on self-reported health. This study aims to examine the association between health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and traffic-related injuries longitudinally in a nationally representative sample of US adult population. This is a longitudinal study of adult participants (age ≥18) from seven panels (2000-2007) of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. The dependent variables included the physical and mental components of the SF-12, a measure of self-reported health. The outcome was assessed twice during the follow-up period: round 2 (~4-5months into the study) and round 4 (~18months into the study) for 62,298 individuals. Two methods estimate the association between traffic-related injuries and HRQOL: a within person change using paired tests and a between person change using multivariable regression adjusting for age, sex, income and educational level. Nine hundred and ninety-three participants reported traffic-related injuries during the follow-up period. Compared to their pre-crash HRQOL, these participants lost 2.7 of the physical component score while their mental component did not change. Adjusted results showed significant deficits in the physical component (-2.84, p value=<.001) but not the mental component (-0.07, p value=.83) of HRQOL after controlling for potential confounders. Traffic injuries were significantly associated with the physical component of HRQOL. These findings highlight the individual and societal burden associated with motor vehicle crash-related disability in the United States.