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The European Journal of Public Health Advance Access published online on March 31, 2008
The European Journal of Public Health, doi:10.1093/eurpub/ckn018
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Public Health Association. All rights reserved.

Actual incidences of road casualties, and their injury severity, modelled from police and hospital data, France

Emmanuelle Amoros, Jean-Louis Martin, Sylviane Lafont and Bernard Laumon

Transport, Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Research and Surveillance Unit (UMRESTTE), a joint unit of French National Institute for Transport and Safety Research (INRETS), Bron F-69500, University of Lyon, University of Lyon 1 (UCBL) and French Institute for Public Health Surveillance (InVS), Lyon, F-69008, France.

Correspondence: Emmanuelle Amoros, UMRESTTE INRETS, 25 avenue François Mitterrand, 69675 Bron cedex, France, tel: +33 4 72 14 25 33, fax: +33 4 72 14 25 20, e-mail: emmanuelle.amoros{at}inrets.fr

Received September 13, 2007 , accepted March 3, 2008

Background: Nation-wide road casualty figures usually come from police data. In France, as in many developed countries, the reporting of fatalities is almost complete but the reporting of non-fatal casualties is rather low. It is moreover strongly biased. Valid estimates are needed. Methods: Using the capture–recapture method on police data and on a road trauma registry covering a large county of 1.6 million inhabitants, we estimate police under-reporting correction factors that account for unregistered casualties. These correction factors are then applied to the nation-wide police data, with standardization on under-reporting bias factors. Results: In 2004, whereas the police report 108 727 non-fatally injured, the estimation yields 400 200. Over the 1996–2004 study period, the average annual estimated incidence is 871/100 000 for all injured (3.4 times the police incidence), 232/100 000 for hospitalized, 103/100 000 for seriously injured (2.2 times the police incidence) and 12.6/100 000 for casualties with long-term major impairment. The incidence of seriously injured (NISS 9+) is 11.3/100 000 for pedestrians, 9.5/100 000 for cyclists, 36.3/100 000 for motorized two-wheel users and 42.5/100 000 for car users. Conclusions: The estimated incidences are much higher than the police-based ones. This changes the scale of the road injuries issue. The risk of suffering a major impairment from a road crash is equal to the risk of being killed. Motorized two-wheel users experience a large burden of traffic casualties, much larger than that indicated by police data. The approach used can be reproduced in other countries, if an additional medical registration exists.

Keywords: capture–recapture, impairments, incidences, injuries, traffic accidents


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