The Impacts of Motorcycle Accidents on Mortality and Disability in Gaza City

Date
2011-08-01
Authors
Zeyad Hassan Yousef Al- Kahlout
زياد حسن يوسف الكحلوت
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Al-Quds University
Abstract
This study on The Impacts of Motorcycle accidents on Mortality and Disability in Gaza City had been implemented to assess the impacts of motorcycle accidents on mortality and disability in Gaza City during the period from January 2008 to January 2010, and to find out the causes of accidents, and what are the drives behind motorcycles use by teenagers and young men. Two types of research designs were used; the first was a quantitative descriptive study design and data were collected retrospectively by reviewing and searching the available statistics and records about motorcycle accidents at the relevant institutions; and the second was a qualitative historical design that is helpful to describe and analyze events that had happened in a remote or recent past to know the causes of motorcycles use and the causes of accidents associated with motorcycles; data were collected by doing semi structured interview. For the quantitative part, statistics about motorcycles accidents in the year 2008, 2009 and until mid 2010 were reached and only 88 files of motorcycle accidents were found at the relevant institutions, and they were reviewed and documented in special forms. For the qualitative part, only 7 subjects (three family members of death cases and four disabilities) were found and participated in the interviews. The results of the quantitative show that, in the year 2008 there were 95 severely injured cases and 20 deaths due to motorcycle accidents in Gaza Strip, cause specific death rate 1.4, case fatality rate 3.2%. In 2009, there were 19 severely injured cases, 4 deaths in Gaza City, 3.8 cases severely injured every 100.000 person and 0.8 dead cases for 100.000 people, and case fatality rate is 6.7% Also, from January to June 2010 there were 17 severely injured cases and three deaths in Gaza City with case fatality rate about 2%. Of the 88 found cases and files, 100% of the drivers where males, did not wear the helmets, did not have insurance for driving motorcycles and only 8% had hold a license to drive motorcycles, and 62.5% aged between 16 25 years. About date and time of the accident, 62.5% of the accidents happened in the year 2009, the majority (39.8%) had happened between 12.01 PM and 6:00 PM, 42% had happened at municipal and City streets, 52.3% were due to collision with other vehicles. About 59% of the affected cases were pedestrians, and the majority of the injuries (36.4%) were multiple body injuries including the head. The qualitative results (semi structured interviews) show that, the main causes of motorcycles use are fun and jealousy from other people peers and friends and the causes of accidents were high speed and lack of attention. The study includes some recommendations for each of the different related institutions to reduce the number of accidents and the resulting severe injuries and deaths.
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