Overweight at risk of car accidents

Overweight people are more often victims of car accidents

22/01/2013

Driving a car is far more dangerous for people with severe overweight than for those of normal weight - this is the result presented by the two US researchers Thomas Rice from the University of California at Berkeley and Motao Zhu from the University of West Virginia currently in the journal "Emergency Medicine Journal".

The more weight, the riskier a car collision
Thus, the study of the two Americans would have shown that „a greater likelihood for overweight motorists is to die from injuries caused by an auto-collision than non-obese individuals involved in the same collision.“ For example, the risk of being killed in an accident increases by 21% for overweight people compared to normal weight persons. If obesity continues to increase, the risk also increases in comparison: for obese, this means a 51 percent and for extremely obese people even an 80 percent increased risk of falling victim to an accident.

Comparison of thousands of accidents
For their investigation, Thomas Rice Motao Zhu had compared in a first step, the data of 57,000 car accidents that had happened between 1996 and 2008 in the United States. In a second step, the two finally focused on cars of comparable size, vehicle type and airbag equipment and also included factors such as age or alcohol consumption of the accident victims in their consideration. Finally, 3,403 accidents were evaluated for which drivers had information on the weight, age and use of safety belts.

Body mass index as a guideline
The evaluation of the accidents clearly showed: persons classified by means of the so-called „Body mass index“ (BMI) were considered to be overweight or obese, had suffered injuries in the chest more often in accidents than drivers who were not overweight: „The risk ratio increased with higher BMI categories and was 1 in 21 at a BMI of 30 to 34.9, 1 in 51 at a BMI of 35 to 39.9 and 1 in 80 at a body mass index of 40 or over 40“, the researchers in the "Emergency Medicine Journal".

The „Body mass index“ is calculated from the body weight divided by the square of the height. According to the obesity classification of the World Health Organization, the BMI for normal-weight persons is between 18.5 and 25, from a value of 30 people are considered to be in need of treatment because of their overweight.

Insufficient safety precautions for obese
One possible cause of these enormous safety differences, the researchers see in the design of the safety precautions: For the seat belts will be „normal weight“ People oriented. For persons with severe obesity, however, this would mean that the belly fat would act as a kind of sponge and delay the release of the seat belts.

Therefore, according to the two researchers, there would be an urgent need to pay more attention to the safety of obese people in the conception of vehicles - as in the United States, heavyweight men (33%) and women (35%) now account for a significant proportion of society.

Increased risk even for underweight
But not only obese people are at an increased risk in a car protocol - even underweight passengers are not sufficiently protected by the currently used security measures according to the study and therefore would be a little more often in an accident killed than people with normal weight. (Sb)

Image: Dieter Schütz