Primary injury prevention and mortality from motor vehicle crashes among children and adolescents in the United States: From safety behaviors to healthy environments

Introduction & Objective. Unintentional injuries from motor-vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among children ages one to 19. On average, 4,500 children die every year from motor-vehicle crashes in the U.S., with total lifetime injury costs estimated at more than ;Methodology. Retrospective study using panel data from 1997 to 2005 from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Data sources included the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the US Census Bureau, the Atlas of Presidential Elections and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. I used conditional fixed effects negative binomial regression to analyze the effect of the covariates on mortality by state and year.;Results. The analysis included a total of 32,893 child fatalities from MVCs. States that allowed fines greater than ;Conclusion. This research focuses on the effects that laws have on mortality, but not on how effectively these laws are implemented and/or enforced. This is an important limitation, since the existence of a law says nothing about how effectively the law is implemented and, more importantly, how effectively the law is enforced. Results may be useful to policy-makers and public health practitioners involved in injury prevention and public health.