Pediatric Surgical Image
Analysis of child–vehicle collision injuries by vehicle type

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpedsurg.2011.09.039Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

This study aimed to determine the severity of injuries to each body region of child pedestrians struck by different types of vehicles.

Methods

We collected in-depth data from the Institute for Traffic Accident Research and Data Analysis on pedestrians younger than 13 years with any bodily injuries from collisions with vehicles between 1993 and 2004.

Results

Sixty-eight patients with a mean age of 6.9 ± 2.4 years were included in the study. In collisions, vehicles caused higher Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) scores than those from impact with the road. Injury Severity Score and AIS values were higher with one-box or sports utility vehicles compared with those in sedan vehicles, but the differences were not statistically significant. The mean AIS score of head injuries was significantly higher with one-box or sports utility vehicles than that with sedans (1.6 ± 2.1 vs 0.5 ± 1.1, P < .05). The mean AIS score of the lower extremities was significantly higher with sedans than that with one-box or sports utility vehicles (1.2 ± 1.0 vs 0.5 ± 0.9, P < .05).

Conclusions

The type and severity of injuries in child–car collisions vary by type of vehicle and pedestrian kinematics.

Section snippets

Data collection

Data on child pedestrians younger than 13 years who were involved in a collision with a vehicle between 1993 and 2004 and had an Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) score of 1 or more were collected from the Institute for Traffic Accident Research and Data Analysis (ITARDA) database. Institute for Traffic Accident Research and Data Analysis was founded in 1992 to prevent traffic collisions and reduce injuries to traffic users in Japan. It combines its own data with accident-related data compiled by

Overview

From the 3331 cases of in-depth collision data investigated by ITARDA for 12 years, information on 279 four-wheeled vehicle–pedestrian collision cases were collected. After excluding cases in which the collision information was missing, the subjects were adult, and the offending vehicles were classified as heavy vehicles, a total of 68 patients (46 boys and 22 girls) from 63 collisions were reviewed for this study. All collisions examined in this analysis occurred on paved roads. The patients'

Discussion

There has been less focus on methods of reducing pedestrian deaths and injuries compared with those for vehicle occupants. Furthermore, with the recent rise in popularity of 1Boxes and SUVs, the issue of vehicle type is becoming more relevant to pedestrian safety. Therefore, in the current study, we investigated the severity of child pedestrian injuries and their differences according to the type of vehicle. Up until the current study, most data were from dummy and cadaver studies. Their use is

Acknowledgment

The present research was presented at the Meeting of Multi-faced Analysis of Accidents, 2006 at ITARDA [18].

References (18)

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