Associação Médica Brasileira

Currently, traffic accidents (TAs) cause the death of more than one million people throughout the world every year,1 causing families to suffer and increasing the costs of healthcare and social security systems.2 For the healthcare sector, TAs are worrisome due to their numbers, their impact on mortality and morbidity (because they affect young age groups with a high number of years of potential life lost [YPLL]), and consequent reduction in life expectancy, in addition to expenditures, overcrowding of emergency rooms, and rehabilitation costs due to sequelae, which also take their toll on families and the society.3 The statistics indicate that for each death caused by TAs, several other victims have to live with important sequelae, requiring rehabilitation services, treatments, and interventions.4 Therefore, both deaths and sequelae, as well as social security expenditures and the high cost of medical and hospital resources5 make TAs an important public health problem. Despite the implementation of the new Brazilian Traffic Code6 in 1998, Brazil is still one of the countries with the most dangerous traffic. Authors point out that even with new laws, traffic control, vehicle safety, and red light cameras, the reduction in deaths and disabilities resulting from TAs is still not significant.7 The numbers reach approximately 40,000 deaths per year, and over 100,000 hospitalizations due to injuries resulting from TAs, not to mention the victims attended to in emergency rooms and then released. In addition, according to recent estimates, around 20% of patients discharged from hospitals will probably have some type of sequela.8 TAs are understood as “unintentional events involving vehicles for transportation of persons that, as happening on the thoroughfare, such event may cause injuries, leave sequelae, and cause death”.9According to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD‐10, codes V01 to V99),10 TAs are included under transport accidents, which include not only land accidents, but also water and air accidents (Fig. 1). Among transport accidents, those taking place on land (frequently referred to as TAs) include different types of victims, such as: pedestrians, cyclists (both driver and passenger), motorcycle riders (both driver and passenger), occupants of three‐wheeled motor vehicles (both driver and passengers), car occupants (both driver and passengers), occupants of pick‐up trucks or vans (both driver and passengers), occupants of heavy transport vehicles (both driver and passengers), bus occupants (both driver and passengers), and other land transport accidents (animal, railway train, streetcar, special vehicle) (Fig. 1). Regarding children and teenagers, researches have shown that their involvement in this type of event is increasing, mainly as pedestrians, cyclists and car occupants of up to 14 years old, becoming drivers after the age of 15.11 It becomes essential to understand the circumstances in which TAs involving children and teenagers occur, as well as the associated factors and their magnitude regarding deaths and hospitalizations, in order to not only evidence such sad reality, but, especially, to indicate paths to search for solutions.