Exposure to Traffic and Risk of Hospitalization Due to Injuries

Abstract

Research on the risk of motor vehicle injuries and their relationship with the amount of travel has been only partially analyzed. The few individual exposure assessments are related to very specific subsets of the driving and traveling populations. This study analyzes the relationship between kilometers traveled and hospitalization due to motor vehicle injuries. Twelve thousand three hundred and sixty nine Spanish university graduates from the Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra multipurpose cohort study were evaluated. They had not been hospitalized due to motor vehicle injuries at baseline and were followed up to eight years. Biannual questionnaires allowed for self-reporting of kilometers traveled in motor vehicles, together with incidence of hospitalization. Covariates in the Cox regression models included age and gender and baseline use of safety belt while driving, driving a vehicle with driver-side airbag, driving a motorcycle, and drinking and driving. There were 49,766 participant-years with an average yearly travel of 7,828 km per person-year. Thirty-six subjects reported a first hospitalization event during this time. The adjusted hazard ratio per additional kilometer traveled was 1.00005 (95% confidence interval 1.000013 to 1.000086). Even the smallest of reductions in the amount of kilometers traveled (from an average of 3,250 km per year to 1,000) has a statistically significant protective effect on the likelihood of sustaining hospitalization due to motor vehicle injury (aHR 0.9, 95% CI 0.78 to 0.98). In light of current policies aimed to reduce motorized traffic due to environmental concerns, it may be appropriate to consider the additional health benefit related to reductions in injuries.

The Use of Telematics Devices to Improve Automobile Insurance Rates

“…Previous traffic studies published in Risk Analysis (Segui-Gomez et al, 2011 andMercer, 1989) have stressed the desirability of including risk exposure in terms of distance driven. We have shown that indeed vehicle telemetry, and the collection of information using GPS-based technology such as percentages of kilometres driven at night, over the speed limit, and in urban zones, among others can be included in the ratemaking process thus improving the results obtained when just using classical driver variables, such as age and gender.…”

“…the probability of not claiming or, in other words, the probability of zero claims. See the following papers on the relevance of including distance driven as a traffic risk factor (Segui-Gomez et al, 2011 andMercer, 1989).…”

Why more male pedestrians die in vehicle-pedestrian collisions than female pedestrians: a decompositional analysis

“…This might permit prevention to be targeted at the factors that have significant effects on elevated pedestrian deaths among men. Similar national travel surveys for exposure data are conducted annually in the UK,8 24 and exposure data is also available in other countries such as Germany, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland 25 26. More research can be conducted in other countries to confirm the US findings and identify factors amenable to intervention.…”

Real-time CO2 emissions estimation in Spain and application to the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Unfortunately, despite the evident influence of traffic related emissions in the global CO 2 emissions, the availability of information about mobility patterns per month and per AACC in Spain was very limited and did not allow us to establish any sensible method of estimating them. Initially, data related to the number of yearly crashes and victims were used as proxy variables for mobility, as there is literature pointing to the existing relationship between exposure and injuries ( Segui-Gomez et al., 2011 ). However even if this data is available up to 2018 it did not end up contributing to the significance of the models.…”