Road Injuries Are Killing Young People, and It's Hardly Slowing Down
upstart writes:
Road injuries are killing young people, and it's hardly slowing down:
Using the latest data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 Study, the researchers analysed deaths and Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) from transport and unintentional injuries in adolescents across 204 countries in the past three decades. They found that despite transport injury death rates falling by a third since 1990, the number of deaths attributed to road fatalities for adolescents still increased in some countries.
"We've seen a high increase in the absolute number of injury-related deaths and DALYs, specifically in low and low-middle income countries. It indicates neglect for a growing population at risk of injury," says lead author Dr Amy Peden, research fellow with the School of Population Health at UNSW Medicine & Health.
According to the research, reductions in transport injury and death rates in high-income countries have slowed in the most recent decade. They dropped just 1.7 per cent a year between 2010 and 2019 compared to the fall of 2.4 per cent a year between 1990 and 2010.
[...] "In high-income countries like Australia, there's been a real decline in progress. In the past 10 years, we've seen reductions in rates of road transport injury essentially stall, showing a lack of attention to the issue," Dr Peden says.
[...] Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to injury risk due to increasing independence and risk-taking tendencies. However, there has been little research to date that has examined injury patterns in this vulnerable age group.
Journal Reference:
The Lancet Adolescent transport and unintentional injuries: a systematic analysis using the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019,
(DOI: 10.1016/S2468-2667(22)00134-7)
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