Fatal road accidents among Finnish military conscripts: fatigue-impaired driving.
The aims of the present study were to determine the current prevalence of personal car usage for holiday trips among Finnish conscripts and to analyze conscripts' fatal road accidents. The data included questionnaire data collected from 259 young conscripts at a garrison in southeastern Finland and data on 46 fatal road accidents caused by conscripts during the years 1991-2004, extracted from the national database of fatal road accidents studied in depth. The questionnaire data showed that one-third (35.9%) of young Finnish conscripts had used personal cars to travel to or from the garrison in the preceding 2 months. More than one-half of them reported driving while fatigued (a majority reported several occasions of such driving). In addition to those driving themselves, 41.6% of the conscripts rode at least occasionally as a passenger in a car driven by a fellow conscript. Analysis of the fatality data showed that one-half of the conscripts' fatal accidents occurred on the way to or from the garrison or while on duty. Falling asleep was the main cause of all conscripts' accidents (34.8%), with the largest proportion occurring when departing for leave (42.9%). Haste (including speeding) was the second greatest factor contributing to accidents occurring on the way to or from the garrison (26.1%), whereas drunk driving (22.7%) and suspected suicides (18.2%) were typical of accidents occurring on leave.
Department of Psychology, Siltavuorenpenger 20D, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland.
Igor
I
Radun
Jenni E
JE
Radun
Heikki
H
Summala
Mikael
M
Sallinen
D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000401:mortality* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001336:Automobiles / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003625:Data Collection; D019992:Databases as Topic; D005387:Finland / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008887:Military Medicine; D008889:Military Personnel; D015995:Prevalence; D012307:Risk Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires