Host, vehicular and environmental factors responsible for road traffic crashes in a nigerian city: identifiable issues for road traffic injury control

Abstract

Introduction: road traffic injury (RTI) has assumed major public health importance world-wide and the burden is heavier on the health-care infrastructure of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Nigeria, RTI is the leading cause of trauma related morbidity and mortality. While there are some published  epidemiological reports on RTI in the region, studies on the mechanism of causation of road traffic  crashes (RTC) are not available.

Methods: over a 9-month period, we prospectively captured the 571  victims of RTC presenting to a single tertiary health care center in Nigeria. Data collected include  demographic data, Mechanism of causation of RTC, Injuries sustained and outcomes.

Results: over three-quarters of the victims are young people and half were either traders (27.5%) or  students (20%). Pedestrians, motorcycle riders and open truck occupants (people sitting at the rear loading compartment of trucks) often had fatal injuries. Analysis of collision patterns showed that lone crashes were the most frequent though car-to-motorcycle crashes caused a quarter of the deaths. Host factors (over-speeding driver, driver misjudgment, sleeping driver etc.) were responsible for four-fifths of the crashes while vehicular and environmental factors accounted for the remaining. On binary regression analysis, head injured victims had higher odds of dying than the non-head injured (Odds ratio = 6.5).

Conclusion: this paper elucidates the mechanisms of causation of and types of injuries sustained  following RTC in Nigeria and thus provide opportunities for prevention and control of this unacceptable situation.

Key words: Road traffic injury, road traffic crash, crash mechanisms