Epidemiological study on Road traffic injury with focus motorcycle injuries and policy recommendations

Abstract

Backgrounds: Morbidity and mortality from road traffic injuries in Thailand are very high with a trend strictly increasing in time, thus establishing one of the major public health problems. Consider on wide use of 20,497,563 registered motorcycles in this country in the year 2015 and information from National Injury surveillance shown three-fourths of the severe injuries came with motorcycle riding, then epidemiological study on road traffic injury with focus motorcycle injuries need to be done.
Methods: Cross-sectional study was conducted in 33 sentinel hospitals from 1 January-31 December 2015 and 9 hospitals regarding road traffic injuries due to motorcycle (V20-V29) from 1 June–31 July 2014 were obtained from the National Injury Surveillance and remarked variables extended by the former injury surveillance form such as the distance and estimated riding time from the injured place from the starting point, etc. Data was analyzed by Epiinfo version 3.5.4.
Results: A total of 61,983 riders were involved from injury surveillance in the year 2015. Among them, 3,526 were dead cases (CFR=5.7%). Of all serious injuries and death, injury due to motorcycle mainly occurred in the 15-19 age group (11,747 cases, 18.98%) and the youngest driver was 7 years old. Crash and single vehicle injuries via unsteady were the main patterns with the highest case fatality rate was from crash mechanism. Dead cases use helmet less than the severe cases both driver and passenger. 49.36% of all injured cases had head injury (ICD10: S00-S09). Only 3% of dead cases with head injury wore helmet. Drink driving of severe injuries and death were 34.16%. Half of severe cases from 9 hospitals were in condition of driving with no motorcycle licenses (2,804 cases, 54.02%). One-fourth of drivers an accident in the past 5 years and driving motorcycle everyday was the major group with 82.6%. Drivers’ causes of single vehicle injuries were unsteady from the animal ran to cut in front of motorcycle (19.9%) and 14.7% from the roughness of road surface. Of all injured cases, most of all had been injured within 2-5 kilometres distance from the starting place to the destination (30.45% within 2 kilometres) and average riding time to complete the journey estimated in 10 minutes.
Conclusions: The results are benefit for epidemiological understanding the large amount of Thai riders who got injured with motorcycle and potential programmes in road traffic injury prevention should not only drive from the government sectors but also community participation with the policy recommendation and variety of successful strategies.