title: Chinese traffic fatalities and injuries in police reports, hospital records, and in-depth records from one city.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Claims of sharp reductions in Chinese traffic casualties after 2002 based on police-reported data have been questioned in the literature. The objective of this study is to determine whether a decline in casualties occurred and to better understand the police data.
  
  
  METHODS
  The first of 2 unrelated studies analyzed data from 210 military hospitals throughout China providing records for inpatients injured in traffic accidents (2001-2007). The second compared in-depth crash records (2000-2006) from one city to officially released data.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Hospital data showed that casualties increased from 2002 to 2007. The city investigation showed consistently far more fatalities and injuries in the in-depth data than officially released. For example, in-depth data showed 1,720 fatalities. Only 557 of these were reported officially (data loss = 68%). Disaggregating into 3 regions showed a data loss of 41% in urban areas, 63% in rural areas, and 90% in rural-urban fringe zones. For injuries, data losses were even greater.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Traffic fatalities and injuries did not decrease from 2002 to 2006. The in-depth city data contained 3 times as many fatalities and 5 times as many injuries as reported by police. Reasons why this occurred and suggestions to improve data collection and reduce casualties are given.
authors.affiliation: a State Key Laboratory of Trauma, Burns and Combined Injury, Institute for Traffic Medicine, Research Institute of Surgery, Daping Hospital , Third Military Medical University , Chongqing , China.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Qiu
authors.forename: Jihong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.forename: Danfeng
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.forename: Jianguo
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Zhiming
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Zhengguo
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Leonard
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Evans
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000401:mortality* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D002681:China / Q000453:epidemiology; D002947:Cities; D006801:Humans; D008499:Medical Records; D016495:Police; D011996:Records; D012424:Rural Population / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014505:Urban Population / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000401:mortality
keywords: China; data bias; road crash; traffic fatality; traffic injury