Victims of road accidents with serious injuries and dependence on some individual, climatic and infrastructure factors on federal highways in Brazil

Abstract

Road or urban traffic accidents in Brazil have a large presence in external causes of mortality. The main goal of this study is to discover significant factors in the incidence of accidents on Brazilian highways based on a database with information on each person injured on federal highways in Brazil reported by the Federal Highway Police. Some factors are considered in the study as cause of the accident, type of accident, stage of the day, weather condition, highway type, highway facility, age of the victim, gender of the victim and type of vehicle. From the obtained results of chi-square tests and logistic regression models, it was observed statistical dependence (p < 0.05) of the occurrence of injured people with serious injuries and the factors cause of the accident, type of accident, day, highway type and vehicle type. Considering the dead victims, the covariates age, time of day, highway type, highway facility, gender and type of vehicle showed significance (p < 0.05). These results are of great interest for authorities to increase road enforcement, improve highway facilities and target the production of vehicles with better safety standards.

Keywords:

• Accidents
• traffic
• wounds and injuries
• deaths

Acknowledgments

The authors are very grateful for the comments and suggestions from the editor and referees that led to a great improvement of the manuscript.