Qiu J, Zhou J, Zhang L, Yao Y, Yuan D, Shi J, Gao Z, Zhou L, Wang Z, Evans L. Traffic Injury Prev. 2015; 16(6): 565-570.
Affiliation
State Key Laboratory of Trauma, Burns and Combined Injury, Institute for Traffic Medicine, Research Institute of Surgery, Daping Hospital , Third Military Medical University , Chongqing 400042 , China.
OBJECTIVES: Claims of sharp reductions in Chinese traffic casualties after 2002 based on police-reported data have been questioned in the literature. To determine whether a decline in casualties occurred, and to better understand the police data.
METHODS: The first of two unrelated studies analyzed data from 210 military hospitals throughout China providing records of inpatients injured in traffic (2001-2007). The second compared in-depth crash records (2000 - 2006) from one city to officially released data.
RESULTS: Hospital data showed casualties increased from 2002 to 2007. The city investigation showed consistently far more fatalities and injuries in the in-depth data than officially released. For example, in-depth data showed 1720 fatalities. Only 557 of these were reported officially (data loss = 68%). Disaggregating into 3 regions showed a data loss of 41% in urban areas, 63% in rural areas, and 90% in rural-urban fringe zones. For injuries data losses were even greater.
CONCLUSIONS: Traffic fatalities and injuries did not decrease from 2002 to 2006. The in-depth city data contained three times as many fatalities and five times as many injuries as reported by police. Reasons why this occurred and suggestions to improve data collection and reduce casualties are given.