Attribution of injury to alcohol involvement in young adults seriously injured in alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes

2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
MS Sommers ◽  
JM Dyehouse ◽  
SR Howe ◽  
J Lemmink ◽  
K Davis ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND: Approximately 40% of all traffic fatalities are associated with the use of alcohol. Hospitalization for serious injury after a motor vehicle crash related to use of alcohol may be an opportunity to change drinking behaviors in non-alcohol-dependent drinkers, thereby reducing the risk for future disability and death. OBJECTIVES: To determine the degree to which non-alcohol-dependent adults aged 18 to 45 years with alcohol-related vehicular trauma attributed their injury to use of alcohol. METHODS: During hospitalization, 132 subjects involved in alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes were interviewed. The interviews included the question, "To what extent do you believe your alcohol consumption was responsible for this injury?" Responses were measured on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (totally). RESULTS: In response to the question about attribution of injury to alcohol, 37.8% of subjects responded "not at all," 24.3 responded "somewhat," and 37.9% responded "mostly" or "totally." Spearman rank correlation between attribution of injury to alcohol involvement and blood alcohol content at admission was r = 0.440 (P < .001). CONCLUSIONS: More than 60% of patients injured in alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes attributed their injury partly or totally to use of alcohol. When alcohol-free, hospitalized patients with higher blood levels of alcohol on admission were more likely than those with lower levels to attribute their injury to alcohol. Hospitalization for a motor vehicle crash related to use of alcohol provides an opportunity for interventions to decrease drinking.

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Males

Teenagers’ high rates of motor vehicle crashes, accounting for 40% of external deaths among 16-19 yearolds, have been ascribed largely to inherent “adolescent risk-taking” and developmental hazards. However, the fact that compared to adults 25 and older, teenagers are twice as likely to live in poverty and low-income areas, risk factors for many types of violent death, has not been assessed. This paper uses Fatality Analysis Reporting System data on 65,173 fatal motor vehicle crashes by drivers in California’s 35 most populous counties for 1994-2007 to analyze fatal crash involvements per 100 million miles driven by driver age, county, poverty status, and 15 other traffic safety-related variables. Fatal crash rates were substantially higher for every driver age group in poorer counties than in richer ones. Multivariate regression found socioeconomic factors, led by the low levels of licensing and high unemployment rates prevalent in low-income areas, were associated with nearly 60% of the variance in motor vehicle crash risks, compared to 3% associated with driver age. The strong association between fatal crash risk and poverty, especially for young drivers who are concentrated in high-poverty brackets and low-income areas, suggests that factors related to poorer environments constitute a major traffic safety risk requiring serious attention.


2020 ◽  
Vol 189 (9) ◽  
pp. 885-893
Author(s):  
Kenneth A Feder ◽  
Ramin Mojtabai ◽  
Elizabeth A Stuart ◽  
Rashelle Musci ◽  
Elizabeth J Letourneau

Abstract In 2011, Florida established a prescription drug monitoring program and adopted new regulations for independent pain-management clinics. We examined the association of those reforms with drug overdose deaths and other injury fatalities. Florida’s postreform monthly mortality rates—for drug-involved deaths, motor vehicle crashes, and suicide by means other than poisoning—were compared with a counterfactual estimate of what those rates would have been absent reform. The counterfactual was estimated using a Bayesian structural time-series model based on mortality trends in similar states. By December 2013, drug overdose deaths were down 17% (95% credible interval: −21, −12), motor vehicle crash deaths were down 9% (95% credible interval: −14, −4), and suicide deaths were unchanged compared with what would be expected in the absence of reform. Florida’s opioid prescribing reform substantially reduced drug overdose deaths. Reforms may also have reduced motor vehicle crash deaths but were not associated with a change in suicides. More research is needed to understand these patterns. Bayesian structural time-series modeling is a promising new approach to interrupted time-series studies.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 4230
Author(s):  
Zijia Zhong ◽  
Lei Zhu ◽  
Stanley Young

Transportation safety, as a critical component of an efficient and reliable transportation system, has been extensively studied with respect to societal economic impacts by transportation agencies and policy officials. However, the embodied energy impact of safety, other than induced congestion, is lacking in studies. This research proposes an energy equivalence of safety (EES) framework to provide a holistic view of the long-term energy and fuel consequences of motor vehicle crashes, incorporating both induced congestion and impacts from lost human productivity resulting from injury and fatal accidents and the energy content resulting from all consequences and activities from a crash. The method utilizes a ratio of gross domestic product (GDP) to national energy consumed in a framework that bridges the gap between safety and energy, leveraging extensive studies of the economic impact of motor vehicle crashes. The energy costs per fatal, injury, and property-damage-only (PDO) crashes in gasoline gallon equivalent (GGE) in 2017 were found to be 200,259, 4442, and 439, respectively, which are significantly greater than impacts from induced congestion alone. The results from the motor vehicle crash data show a decreasing trend of EES per crash type from 2010 and 2017, due primarily in part to a decreasing ratio of total energy consumed to GDP over those years. In addition to the temporal analysis, we conducted a spatial analysis addressing national-, state-, and local-level EES comparisons by using the proposed framework, illustrating its applicability.


2021 ◽  
pp. e1-e10
Author(s):  
Marlene C. Lira ◽  
Timothy C. Heeren ◽  
Magdalena Buczek ◽  
Jason G. Blanchette ◽  
Rosanna Smart ◽  
...  

Objectives. To assess cannabis and alcohol involvement among motor vehicle crash (MVC) fatalities in the United States. Methods. In this repeated cross-sectional analysis, we used data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System from 2000 to 2018. Fatalities were cannabis-involved if an involved driver tested positive for a cannabinoid and alcohol-involved based on the highest blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of an involved driver. Multinomial mixed-effects logistic regression models assessed cannabis as a risk factor for alcohol by BAC level. Results. While trends in fatalities involving alcohol have remained stable, the percentage of fatalities involving cannabis and cannabis and alcohol increased from 9.0% in 2000 to 21.5% in 2018, and 4.8% in 2000 to 10.3% in 2018, respectively. In adjusted analyses, fatalities involving cannabis had 1.56 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.48, 1.65), 1.62 (95% CI = 1.52, 1.72), and 1.46 (95% CI = 1.42, 1.50) times the odds of involving BACs of 0.01% to 0.049%, 0.05% to 0.079%, and 0.08% or higher, respectively. Conclusions. The percentage of fatalities involving cannabis and coinvolving cannabis and alcohol doubled from 2000 to 2018, and cannabis was associated with alcohol coinvolvement. Further research is warranted to understand cannabis- and alcohol-involved MVC fatalities. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print October 28, 2021:e1–e10. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306466 )


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