The Epidemiological Research On Traffic Injuries On Shenyang-Dalian Expressway

ObjectiveThrough the investigation into traffic accidents on Shenyang — Dalian expressway ( Shen - Da expressway for short) during the twelve years, to extract the distribution characteristics in time, locations, personnel, vehicles, wound types etc. to conclude the characteristics and rules of China traffic injuries on expressway. And to know the accident types, accident causing reasons, injury degrees, and present rescue condition of traffic accidents on expressway. Discussing what effective measures should be taken to lower the traffic accidents and casualties on expressway.MethodsEpidemiological investigation technology was adopted in collection of the o-riginal traffic accidents records on Shenyang - Dalian expressway. Epidemiological Investigation Database for Traffic Accidents on Shenyang — Dalian Expressway was set up with the Visual FoxPro software, and analzied with the Excel software. The statistic contents on traffic accidents included the distributions in the unit of year, month, week, hour, the distribution in every region along the road, the distribution of crashed vehicles types, traffic accidents'types and accident causing reasons, the distribution of casualties'age and occupations, the distribution of casualties'wound types and wound parts; rescue time and rescue vehicles'transportation after accidents taking place, the injured personnel's ultimate results and their disabilities; Death time, death reasons, mortality, the distribution of crashed vehicles'drivers'age, driving age and occupations ; the injured and dead pedestrians'proportions, years of potential life lost( YPLL) , working years of potential lost( WYPLL) , valued years of potential life lost(VYPLL) of the dead.ResultsThe traffic accidents times, the injured number and the death toll increased annually in the statistics period of time on Shen - Da expressway; increasing rate also went up annually. It increased slowly in the former time, quickly in the latter time. Take, accident number as an example, the average annual increasing rate for the period 1990 -95 was 8% ;1995 -2001 was 25%. But the death toll did not increase synchronously with the accident number of this time, increase comparatively slowly. Each month in a year, each day in a week and each hour in a day, accident number, casualties number and mortality all had more or less differences. The obvious distribution characteristics were: in each year, during winter and spring, accidents rate were low, summer and autumn time were high; In each day, the highest accidents rate occurred at 14 -15 oclock, and before midnight were lower than after midnight, daytime mortality were lower than nighttime. Traffic accidents distribution along the road was obviously uneven. Namely this road had high frequent accident districts. In some certain districts, different driving directions also made big differences in accident distribution. In accident forms, the " vehicle - vehicle" type accidents occupied 50% , the " vehicle ~ person" type accidents occupied 12% , the vehicle itself accidents occupied 38%. The first 6 accident types, according to occurrence frequency, were listed one by one in order; two vehicles rear — end collision, crash into parking vehicles, pedestrians got hit, crash into the guardrail, turnover and exceeding contact. These 6 types occupied 80% more. In all kinds of reasons that cause accidents, drivers'factors occupied 75% , vehicles'factors occupied 10% , pedestrians'factors occupied 8% , road factors occupied 7%. Among all kinds of crashed vehicles, trucks occupied 60% more; among them the big trucks occupied 45%. Casualties'age show an evident normal distribution, the fastigium of accident rate occurred in 35 - 40 yrs, the 20 ~ 60 years olds occupied 95%. Casualties'occupations mainly were worker, farmer, individual owner, totallythese three items occupied 70% , the proportion of the male and female was roughly 8:1. In injury types, mechanical injuries occupied 95% , burn injuries occupied 4% , the rest were mixed injuries. Head injury occupied the highest proportion-----30% , among all the injured parts of the body, the chest occupied 21% , upper and lower limbs occupied 17% , the rest were other parts injuries. Cranium -brain injury was the main reason to traffic accident deaths, occupying 53. 1 %. Hemorrhagic shock and blood vessel rupture totally occupied 23. 6% , chest trauma was 19% , and the rest were other reasons. About the span of death ,70% of all the dead died on the spot. In the ultimate statistics for the accident involved personnel, the recovered occupied 60% , the disability ones occupied 13% , the dead were 27%. Among the disability personnel, 24% were paraplegia, 17% were mentally handicapped, 10% were face scarred, 10% were functional handicapped in lower limbs, 10% were paraplegia under waist, 7% were amputated in the upper limbs, 7% were in vegetable state, 6% were cervical paraplegia, 5% were functional handicapped in the upper limbs, the rest were other types. Among those vehicles that carried wounded people, ambulances only occupied 24% , the rest were other vehicles. 60% of the wounded had waited more than 2 hours before they were sent to hospitals. Drivers shared 33% of all casualties. Obviously, there was a peak distribution between crash rate and driving age - crash rate increased with driving age in the first 5 years, and the fastigium was in the fifth year. When driving age was over 5 years, crash rate decreased with driving age. 44% of the accidents were caused by the drivers whose driving age were among 1-----5 years. Crash causing drivers were mainly in the age of 25 - 45 yrs . The injured parts of drivers were mainly in the chest ( Others were mainly in the head. ). Drivers'mortality rate was 3 percent higher than all casualties' average rate. In the statistics of dead personnels potential lost, the summed YPLL was 54736 person year, WYPLL was 40261 person year, VYPLL was 31202 person year. Averagely, individuals YPLL was 40.31 years, WYPLL was 39.65 years, VYPLL was 22.98 years.ConclusionThe traffic accident number, the injured times and the death toll increased annually during these 12 years on this road. Compared with the general highway, traffic accident frequency on expressway was higher in unit length, and casualties'average severity was higher either. There were high risky districts and time of accidents, and in some districts different driving directions caused big difference in accident frequency. Mortality on this road was higher than general highway in our country, and also higher than the expressway in advanced countries. The accident causing reasons and accident types on expressway also had big differences with general highway. Among all the accident causing reasons, the fundamental reason was that drivers did not adapt to, acquaint themselves with the driving environment on expressway psychologically. Youth and the middle - aged consisted of main part of the casualties, among them, men and women's proportion was 8:1. According to potential lost data, we concluded that the YPLL, WYPLL and VYPLL of traffic injuries on expressway were greatly higher than the average figures of total death people caused by variety of reasons , both to the individuals and to the society, and also higher than the average figures of other types of the roads. So, traffic injuries on expressway endangered more severely. In the distribution of casualties'occupations, fanners'proportion was 21% , comparatively high. Casualties' positions were mainly inside motor vehicles, casualties of "pedestrians" were 13%-----this proportion was comparatively high especially on expressway. In injure types, 95% were mechanical injures, burn injures occupied 4% - - higher than general highway. The proportion of cranium - brain injuries was highest, so the head was the mostly injured part among traffic injuries on expressway. The proportion of ambulance a-mong the wounded carrying vehicles was low, and the proportion of the wounded carrying vehicles'arrival time within 1 hour was also low. The rescue level on this expressway should be improved. The lower limbs amputated and the mentally handicapped were most of the disability people. Truck was the main accident causing object on expressway. There are big distinctions between expressway...