Medical Impairment and Highway Crashes

Observational Failures/Distraction and Disease Attack/Incapacity as Cause(s) of Fatal Road Crashes in Finland

“…Consequently, counting together the present data on OFD and DA with the reported data on falling asleep accidents, mental diseases in suicide accidents, and alcoholism in alcohol accidents, the role of driver's DA as a causative factor for FMVA is likely to be higher than 10.3%, probably at least 15-20% or higher. This is a very high number compared with the data published earlier (Halinen and Jaussi, 1994;Herner et al, 1966;Grattan and Jeffcoate, 1968;Waller, 1969;Andreasson, 1980). Already during the 1980s the illness-caused deaths explained more than 12% of traffic deaths in Florida (Copeland, 1987), which apparently results from the high proportion of senior drivers in that US state.…”

“…Earlier studies have reported frequencies between 0.1 and 3.4% (Herner et al, 1966;Grattan and Jeffcoate, 1968;Waller, 1969;Andreasson, 1980). However, our results are approximately the same as recently reported in another Finnish study (55/390; 14%) exploring the years 2001 and 2002 (Rainio et al, 2007).…”