High velocity impact associated with automobile accidents produces a pattern of injury familiar to physicians who care for these patients. Health care providers are less acquainted with the patterns of injury in nonautomotive vehicular accidents.

Motorcycle, pedestrian, and bicycle/moped accidents are responsible for a substantial percentage of highway collisions leading to critical injury, disability, and death. In an effort to identify the patterns of injury seen with these three non-automotive mechanisms of injury, a retrospective review of all patients admitted to The Regional Trauma Center of Southern New Jersey was undertaken. The data reviewed included age, mechanism of injury, presence of shock, presence of head, chest, or abdominal injury, and fracture distribution. These patterns were then compared to the injuries seen after automotive accidents. Based on the data, six significant conclusions delineating the differences in automotive versus non-automotive injury patterns were found.