The Pattern of Vehicle Fire Fatalities Due to Road traffic injures(RTIs)in Iran: Findings from a 10-Year Cross-Sectional Study

Introduction: Vehicle fire is one of the most important causes of fatality in road traffic injuries(RTIs), but there is no accurate statistics about vehicle fire fatalities due to RTIs in Iran. To gain an insight into the pattern of vehicle fire fatalities in Iran and giving a base of the problem in an Asian context, this study investigated this pattern in Kerman, the largest Iranian province with the highest rate of RTIs in this country.Materials and methods: In this cross-sectional study, a researcher-made checklist was used to collect the required data from the files of RTIs fatalities in the Kerman Legal Medicine Organization. All reported victims of vehicle fires in the ten-year period from 2007 to 2017 were included in the study. The data were analyzed using SPSS ver. 18, with p=0.05 considered as the level of significance.age of 30.45±12.41, of which 51.6% were in the 25-49 years age group. Most frequently, the victims were Iranian (91.9%), married (67.7%), self-employed (53.2%),and urban dwellers (79.8%), and had passed away because of burns (91.9%). In 46.8% of cases, victims were the driver and in the remaining 53.2%, they were the passenger of the crashed vehicle. Most frequently, vehicle fires had occurred on extra-urban roads (99.2%), during spring (35.5%) or summer (32.3%), due to a vehicle-to-vehicle collision (66.9%), between sedans (66.9%), at night (57.3%), and victims had died at the scene of the incident (87.8%), and had been transferred to hospital by an ambulance (71%).Conclusion: Given the high frequency of vehicle fire fatality of less than 50 year drivers and passengers on the extra-urban roads, especially at nights and during school break seasons, it is necessary to adopt more effective monitoring and preventive measures with stricter enforcement of vehicle, road, and driving safety regulations in the high traffic roads, especially during the aforementioned periods.

Keywords:

Vehicle fire , Road traffic injuries (RTIs) , fatality , Iran