gms | German Medical Science

Objectives: Our local Accident Research Unit collects a representative sample of road traffic accidents with injury in an area with approx. 2,300 m² and 1.15 mio inhabitants since the 1980s. Due to improved traffic safety the share of accidents with serious and fatal injuries becomes smaller resulting in sample sizes that are hardly meaningful for statistical analyses.

Methods: In order to increase the number of analysable accidents the accident data collection of all road traffic accidents with fatalities in our local sample area was started in 2019 in addition to the statistical sampling method that covers approx. 25% of all accidents with injuries. In cases where the victims die at the scene, during transport or in the early phase in the hospital an alarm allowed starting accident data collection on scene. For cases where the victim died at a later stage the data collection mainly considered police data (including photos) in combination with a later investigation of vehicles and the accident location. Injuries were diagnosed by autopsies, post-mortem CT scans or hospital records if possible. In a small number of cases only external inspections of the bodies were possible.

Results and Conclusion: In total 65 accidents with 66 fatalities were collected in the years 2019 and 2020 of in total 2,096 collected accidents in these two years including 4,802 involved people, of which 2,638 were inured. The majority of the accients were single car accidents (30%) followed by car-to-car-accidents and car-to-truck-accidents (each 12%). Car-to-bicycle-accidents accounted for 10% of the sample while car-to-pedestrian, truck-to-truck and single bicycle accidents each had a share of 4% of the accidents.

59% of the fatalities died at the accident scene, while 15% died in the hospital within 24 hours and the remaining 26% died in the hospital more than 24 hours after the accident.

The majority of fatal injuries were head injuries accounting for 58% of the fatalities followed by thoracic injuries accounting for 47% and abdominal trauma (15%).

For car and truck occupants technical rescue was necessary in 60% of all cases, however only 10% of all fatally injured car and truck occupants still lived while extricating.

For a large portion of the fatalities active and passive safety measures (measures that reduce the accident risk and measures that reduce the injury risk and or severity in case of accidents) appear to be the only solution for addressing fatalities. However, in 56% of the cases medical treatment already started before death.