Pregnant Women At Higher Risk for Car Crashes, Especially 2nd Trimester
A new study from Canada suggests that pregnant women are at greater risk of car crashes, especially since the second trimester.
Research shows that, during the second trimester of pregnancy, a woman’s odds of being in a car crash bad enough to end up in the emergency room were 42% higher than in the three years prior to pregnancy. However, by the third trimester, the risk of being in a car crash fell to significantly lower than the years before pregnancy, and fell even further in the first year after giving birth.
“It amounts to about a 1 in 50 statistical risk of the average women having a motor vehicle crash at some point during her pregnancy,” said Dr. Donald Redelmeier of the University of Toronto, who was the lead researcher for the study.
The researchers identified more than 500,000 women who gave birth in the Ontario area between 2006 and 2011. They looked through hospital information from three years before the women became pregnant, during their pregnancy, and one year after they gave birth. They found that the women were generally imperfect drivers during their pregnancy, and counted a total of 6,922 car crashes per year, which worked out to around 4.55 crashes per 1,000 women. During the first month of the second trimester, that crash rate soared to 7.66 car crashes per 1,000 women, dropping to 6.47 car crashes for the rest of the second trimester.
The statistics show that pregnant women are more likely to be involved in a car crash – the average population is in 2 car crashes for every 1,000 drivers.
Researchers noted that, in general, the pregnant women were younger than the average population, which could help explain their tendency to be in car crashes. The women’s youth indicates that their husbands are generally young as well, so Redelmeier did not suggest that the pregnant women should stop driving and let their husbands drive them instead.
“We aren’t recommending pregnant woman delegate their driving to their husbands,” Redelmeier said. “Young adult men are even more dangerous behind the wheel. They have even higher crash rates [than pregnant women].”
“The message here is not to stop driving,” Redelmeier added. “The message is to start driving more carefully.”
“We’ve known for a long time that pregnancy causes fatigue, insomnia, nausea and stress,” he said. “What we wondered was how all those factors might contribute to driver error and the possibility of a life-threatening motor vehicles crash … I was surprised by the magnitude of the effect. … It’s a substantial risk.”
The Strom Law Firm Can Help with Car Crash Injury Cases
Although many of the people we represent in these cases are from right here in South Carolina, our lawyers routinely take clients from throughout the Southeastern U.S. and, in certain types of product liability or pharmaceutical cases, from across the country as well. If you or a loved one has been injured or killed through no fault of your own, whether from a defective product or in a car crash, you may have a personal injury case. Contact the South Carolina wrongful death attorneys at the Strom Law Firm, LLC today for a free, no-cost consultation today. 803.252.4800
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