Analysis of fatal road traffic accidents in a township of south India

Road traffic accidents have been one of the most significant public health issue due to its frequency of occurrence and increasing vehicle density, worldwide. With the aim of considering the socio segment profile of road traffic casualties, the forerunner factors influencing road traffic accidents and to decide the different components influencing demise rate following road traffic accidents, this retrospective study of medico – legal autopsies was conducted during October 2014 and October 2016 at the Department of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology, Kasturba Medical College Udupi District, Karnataka, South India. For the purpose of this study, autopsy files and inquest documents provided by the investigating officer were studied in detail and the data collected was analyzed using the statistical software SPSS version 11.0. Among the victims, 62.9% were males and 37.1% were females with male: female ratio of 2:1. The mean age of the casualties were 43.73 years and age bunch between 21 to 60 years were considered as casualties for the significant portion of road traffic fatalities. 31.13 % of the victims were pedestrians and 68.87% were vehicular occupants. 64.57 % of the victims travelled in the vehicle without using any safety measures. It was observed that tertiary health care (68.54%) had major effect on death rate followed by secondary (29.14%) and then primary health care (2.32%). Head injury alone was liable for nearly three-fourth of road traffic loss of life followed by abdominal injuries (29.8%) and wounds to the limbs (0.33%). The above findings show that road traffic accidents are a public health concern and there is a need to address this with health education, betterment of the roads, stricter enforcement of the traffic laws and expanding the system responding to health care emergencies.