Nasrin Shahedifar - Msc., Road Traffic Injury Research Center, Tabriz, Iran
Bahram Samadirad - MD: Legal Medicine Research Center, Legal Medicine Organization, Tehran, Iran
Homayoun Sadeghi-Bazargani - MD, MPH, PhD: Road Traffic Injury Research Center, Statistics and Epidemiology Department, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
Mina Golestani - PhD: Road Traffic Injury Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran

Background: Iran belongs to the higher rank group of countries in terms of road traffic mortality and injury and signifies the necessity of being investigated regarding road traffic injuries and deaths.Objective: To study epidemiology of car users’ mortality regarding type of crash counterpart vehicle, over an eight-year period from 2006-2014, in East Azerbaijan, Iran, was the aim of the current study.Methods: A total of 3051 car user road traffic mortalities (CURTMs) who have been registered in East Azerbaijan forensic medicine database, Iran, during 2006-2014 were studied and analyzed using Stata 13 statistical software package (Stata Corp, Texas).Results: Distribution of crash counterparts among car users died due to traffic injuries showed that trucks were the leading cause of mortality for car users, comprising about 29% of the car user mortalities. Excluding the cases when no other vehicle was engaged, truck caused 44% of the mortalities, followed by other cars causing 33% of car user deaths. In assessing the role of the type of counterpart vehicle on pre-hospital mortality, considering the other cars to be the reference group for comparison, deceased victims were 1.83 times more likely to die before getting to the hospital when the counterpart vehicle was a truck (95% CI: 1.46-2.29) followed by buses (odds ratio=1.66; 955 CI: 1.1-2.74).Conclusions: The epidemiological study of an eight-year span discusses the necessity of separating the roads for heavy and light vehicles as to prevent a large number of crashes causing mortality of car users.

Car User, Counterpart Vehicle, Mortality, Traffic Injury, Epidemiology, Iran