Road injuries in Quebec (1974):​ nature, severity and direct costs

Bourbeau, R. R.; Laberge-Nadeau, C.

Affiliations

¹Department of Demography, University of Montreal

²Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Montreal

Abstract

We have analysed a sample of 1008 persons injured in road accidents in the Province of Quebec in the year 1974 in order to explore the accuracy of road accident statistics and to obtain a classification of victims by severity of injuries. We have compared police and hospital reports for our victims, all these informations being gathered in the records of the Third Party Liability Service of the Quebec Health Insurance Board. All fatal cases were notified by police but only 7 of the 22 deaths were correctly notified. For the in-patients, 72.6% were correctly notified and 3.4% were not reported by the police. Only 53.5% of the out-patients were properly notified and 24.4% were not reported by the police.

Using these results, we produced corrected figures for provincial transport statistics which appeared to underestimate the number of victims by 22%. From the data obtained from the Department of Social Affairs, we have estimated that the number of road victims lies between 70,093 and 79,600.

We then computed the Injury Severity Score (I.S.S.) of each victim and found that in-patients were more than three times more injured than out-patients. Pedestrians appeared to be the type of road user with the greatest ISS; occupants of cars ranked second followed by the motorcyclists and the cyclists. Fractures were the most common injury and the extremities were the region most frequently injured.

A strong positive relation was found between the ISS and the period of treatment and the length of stay in hospital confirming the relevance of the ISS for summarizing injury severity, especially in patients with multiple trauma. Finally costs of medical services were estimated for our average inpatient and out-patient.

Cited Works (3)

Year	Entry
1976	The Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) 1976 Revision. Morton Grove, IL: Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM); 1976.
1973	Bull JP, Roberts BJ. Road accident statistics: a comparison of police and hospital information. Accid Anal Prev. 1973;5(1):45-53.
1974	Baker SP, O'Neill B, Haddon W Jr, Long WB. The injury severity score: a method for describing patients with multiple injuries and evaluating emergency care. J Trauma. March 1974;14(3):187-196.

Cited By (1)

Year	Entry
1980	Le Bourdais C, Laberge-Nadeau C, Bourbeau RR. Pedestrian injuries and medical treatment. In: 24th Annual Proceedings, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM). October 7-9, 1980; Rochester, NY.316-327.