Epidemiologic Characteristic of Road Traffic Accidents Mortality in Mashhad, Iran

We read an interesting article entitled Trauma mortality:using injury severity score (ISS) for survival predictionin east of Iran , by Ehsaei et al. published in Razavi internationaljournal of medicine in February 2014 (1).About 70 deaths per day in Iran occur because of roadtraffic injuries (2). Traffic injury rates have been rapidlyrisen out of control because of a variety of possible reasonssuch as increasing number of non-standard cars and motorcycles,low gas price, decreasing ratio of travels by publictransportation compared to private vehicles, and problemswith safety design (3).In a cross sectional investigation carried out fromMarch 2012 to March 2013, we tried to determine the epidemiologiccharacteristic of road traffic accidents mortalityin Mashhad, the second populated city in Iran. So thesedata could add helpful information to your manuscriptfor better planning to reduce road traffic death in similarcities in the world.Data including age, gender, nationality, place of deathand type of vehicle related to road traffic accidents mortalitywere gatheredfromcemeteryandcoroner organizationrecords. Cases that had incomplete data were excluded.From total number of 16000 deaths which wererecorded, 850 deaths were due to road traffic accidents.191 cases (22.47%) were female and 659 cases (77.53%) weremale. 798 cases were Iranian and 52 were Afghan.42% of deaths were car occupants, 28% motorcyclists,25% pedestrians, 4% cyclists and 1% air crash. The 21 - 30-year-old group was the most affected group with 24.1% ofdeaths.Among the 850 deaths due to road traffic accidents,just 237 people (27.8%) died after hospital admission andthe rest (613 people) died before reaching hospital.Death pattern in Mashhad is similar to United States’in 2012. Most deaths are seen among vehicle occupants.Maybe it is the result of less driving experience in this agegroup (4).

Keywords:

Road , Traffic , Death , Epidemiologic , Characteristic , Car , Occupants