Citation

Pitt TM, Nettel-Aguirre A, McCormack GR, Howard AW, Piatkowski C, Rowe BH, Hagel BE. Inj. Epidemiol. 2019; 6(1): e7.

Affiliation

3Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, 28 Oki Drive NW, Calgary, T3B 6A8 Canada.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, The author(s), Publisher Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group - BMC)

DOI

10.1186/s40621-019-0185-z

PMID

31245256

PMCID

PMC6582693

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Bicycle-related injuries are among the most common recreational injuries for children in Canada; moreover, bicycle-motor vehicle collisions often result in serious injuries. This study seeks to examine environmental, motorist, and bicyclist characteristics of bicycle-motor vehicle collisions that resulted in police reported severe injuries in youth (< 18 years old) bicyclists, in Alberta, Canada.

FINDINGS: Using Calgary and Edmonton police collision reports, 423 youth bicycle-motor vehicle collisions were identified from 2010 to 2014. Forty-three (10.2%) of these collisions resulted in major/fatal (severe) injuries. These severe injury cases were compared with the 380 youth bicycle-motor vehicle collisions resulting in minor or no injury (controls) using classification tree and logistic regression analyses. There were no driver or bicyclist characteristics with a significant effect on the odds of severe injury to youth bicyclists; however, lower odds were found on each of: divided roads with no barrier (aOR = 0.36; 95% CI: 0.13-0.97) or during peak traffic time (aOR = 0.44; 95% CI: 0.16-0.99).

CONCLUSION: Personal and environment characteristics should be considered in future research and interventions focused on reducing severe youth bicycle-motor vehicle collision injuries.

Language: en

Keywords

Bicycle collisions; Classification tree analysis; Police reports; Severe bicycle injuries; Youth injury