title: Are child passenger fatalities and child passenger severe injuries equally affected by child restraint legislation? The case of Chile.
abstract: The objective of this study is to determine the contribution of Chile's 2005 child restraint legislation to the reduction of child passenger fatalities and severe injuries. We analysed motor vehicle injury and fatality data from Chile's National Road Safety Commission of the Ministry of Transport from 2000 to 2012 to determine the effect of Chile's 2005 mandatory child restraint legislation. Using interrupted time-series Poisson regression models, we assessed the effect of the law on two dependent variables: (1) number of child fatalities in car and (2) number of children severely injured. The independent variable was the 2005 enactment of Chile's mandatory child restraint legislation. Coefficients from the interrupted time-series Poisson regression models indicate that Chile's enactment of child restraint legislation in 2005 is significantly associated with a total of 35% reduction in child passenger severely injured but only three years after its enactment, and significant associations between this policy and child fatalities were less evident.
authors.affiliation: a Institute for Health and Social Policy , McGill University , Montreal , Canada.
authors.forename: J I
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8944-5182
authors.initials: JI
authors.lastname: Nazif-Muñoz
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Falconer
authors.affiliation: b Department of Sociology , McGill University , Montreal , Canada.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gong
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000401:mortality* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D001334:Automobile Driving / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D001336:Automobiles / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002648:Child; D057207:Child Restraint Systems; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002677:Chile / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D065186:Interrupted Time Series Analysis; D016012:Poisson Distribution; D015599:Trauma Severity Indices; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000453:epidemiology*
keywords: Child restraint legislation; Chile; child safety; injury; mortality