Data from the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) and London’s Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) were used to determine the most frequent injuries received by pedestrians in traffic accidents. The cost of the different injuries was estimated using a model based on the pedestrians’ duration of stay in intensive care and/or standard hospital wards using information recorded by the HEMS. These costs were weighted using the national HES dataset. This showed that injuries to the lower limbs of pedestrians cost cumulatively more than injuries to any other body region. However, the list of the ten most costly individual injuries was split between head and lower limb injuries.
Keywords:
pedestrians; injuries; accident analysis; cost benefit analysis