This is a preliminary study on an interdisciplinary project "commuting accidents". One part of the project concerns the commuting system, the other medical aspects of the accidents. The aim of the project is to study all sorts of accidents information regarding with personal injury occurring on commuting modes. The source of is the individual reports within the compulsory health insurance accidents at work in Sweden.

This preliminary study was made on commuting accidents in the Stockholm region 1971. The reason for choosing this region was that an extensive study about patterns of travelling in this region 1971 has been published. The population at risk in this investigation was those travelling to and from work, about 0.7 million people.

This study contains 1718 cases. The results are based on the method of referring each accident to its proper group in the population and then try to explain the differences in accident rates between the groups by analysing the commuting process.

The commuter's risk of having an accident with personal injury is 8.4 for those using public means of transportation, 2.7 for car transport and 8.7 for pedestrians and two-wheelers all figures per one million traveis. The high figure in the first case is explained by the method of referring each accident to its proper link in a chain of transport. The risk when walking to work and to public vehicles is 67, during travel with the vehicle it is 1, and during walk from the vehicles to work 24 per one million travelling hours.

The modal accident can be described by the following characteristics. The injured person is a woman 55 to 64 years old, who is injured in an accident by falling to the ground, while she is late and rushing to a bus-stop in order to get to work. She is having skeletal injuries in her hand, which is characterized as AIS 3 and causes her between 35 and 49 days of impairment.