
Safety 2010 Conference CMS

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Address *	Safe Transportation Research & Education Center Department of Environmental Health Sciences 2614 Dwight Way #7374 Berkeley, CA
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Oral Poster Workshop

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Each year in the US an estimated 300,000 persons die from obesity-related causes. Obesity is also known to increase morbidity and decrease quality of life. While there is a large body of research on the health consequences of obesity, few studies have looked at how obesity affects injury risk or injury outcomes among vehicle occupants. The goal of this study was to provide knowledge on how occupant obesity influences the risk of fatal injury and interacts with vehicle and occupant risk factors during severe traffic collisions. The specific aims of the study were to (1) estimate the association of obesity with death risk among passenger vehicle drivers aged 16 or older, and (2) determine if obesity effects are influenced by vehicle and collision characteristics. A matched-pair cohort study was conducted using data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, a national fatal collision data system. Data were analyzed with conditional Poisson regression, and missing values were multiply imputed. The ability of passenger vehicles to protect overweight or obese occupants may have increasingly important public health implications, given the ongoing obesity epidemic in the US. Currently, more than 33% of adult men and 35% of adult women are obese (BMI >= 30). It may be that passenger vehicles are adequate at protecting normal weight occupants but are deficient in protecting overweight or obese occupants. The knowledge generated from this study may be of particular interest to occupant protection engineers, as well as public health and injury prevention professionals.

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