The immediate diagnosis following road Accident trauma is the main source for assessing the severity and coding of injuries. The long term consequences are increasingly more focused, but still, methods for assessing impairment are rare. This seems to be a problem as the impairment pattern is quite different from the injury pattern at the scene of the accident or immediately after. This results in a different interest in injury prevention for different body areas and severities, depending when the judgement is made.
In this paper the impairment pattern for road accident injuries years after the accident is identified. Different levels of impairment have been recorded as well as the type of road users.
Moreover, the impairment pattern was found to be unique for different types of road users as well as for different ages. It is also obvious that the impairment risk is focused around a few diagnoses. The result can be used for formulating what future priorities that should be set up in the field of crash protection for car occupants as well as for unprotected road users.