Applying count time series to assess 13-year pedestrian mortality trend caused by traffic accidents in East-Azerbaijan province, Iran

Abstract

In populated cities, pedestrian mortality is higher compared to other traffic mortalities. The current study aimed to describe the trend of pedestrian mortality in the East-Azerbaijan (Northwest of Iran) province from 2006 to 2019 and find the factors that affect the mortality number. Pedestrian mortality data from March 2006 to March 2019 was obtained from the Legal Medicine Organization database of Iran. Generalized Linear Auto Regressive Moving Average (GLARMA) models were used to assess the trend, and affecting factors of pedestrian mortality. According to the traffic accident data from 21 March 2006 until 20 March 2019 in East-Azerbaijan 24.11% of mortalities are related to pedestrians. Pedestrian mortality had a decreasing seasonal trend during 2006–2019. The result of the GLARMA model showed that age >65, being non-educated, cases with head trauma death cause, pre-hospital death, accident inside the city, vehicle type and self-employed jobs had a direct relation to pedestrian’s mortality.

Keywords:

• Interrupted time series analysis
• pedestrian
• accidents
• fatal outcome
• Iran

Acknowledgments

This article is part of a major project of "National Document for Health and Traffic Safety in the Islamic Republic of Iran", which has been assigned to the Road Traffic Injury Research Center in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences by the order of the Plan and Budget Organization in the Presidency Islamic Republic of Iran. The project’s lead author and the scientific secretary is Dr. Homayoun Sadeghi-Bazargani and under the responsibility of Dr. Mohammad Hossein Somi. The ethical code of this project is IR.TBZMED.REC.1397.1009.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.