IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pmed00/1002347.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Prescription medicine use by pedestrians and the risk of injurious road traffic crashes: A case-crossover study

Author

Listed:
  • Mélanie Née
  • Marta Avalos
  • Audrey Luxcey
  • Benjamin Contrand
  • Louis-Rachid Salmi
  • Annie Fourrier-Réglat
  • Blandine Gadegbeku
  • Emmanuel Lagarde
  • Ludivine Orriols

Abstract

Background: While some medicinal drugs have been found to affect driving ability, no study has investigated whether a relationship exists between these medicines and crashes involving pedestrians. The aim of this study was to explore the association between the use of medicinal drugs and the risk of being involved in a road traffic crash as a pedestrian. Methods and findings: Data from 3 French nationwide databases were matched. We used the case-crossover design to control for time-invariant factors by using each case as its own control. To perform multivariable analysis and limit false-positive results, we implemented a bootstrap version of Lasso. To avoid the effect of unmeasured time-varying factors, we varied the length of the washout period from 30 to 119 days before the crash. The matching procedure led to the inclusion of 16,458 pedestrians involved in an injurious road traffic crash from 1 July 2005 to 31 December 2011. We found 48 medicine classes with a positive association with the risk of crash, with median odds ratios ranging from 1.12 to 2.98. Among these, benzodiazepines and benzodiazepine-related drugs, antihistamines, and anti-inflammatory and antirheumatic drugs were among the 10 medicines most consumed by the 16,458 pedestrians. Study limitations included slight overrepresentation of pedestrians injured in more severe crashes, lack of information about self-medication and the use of over-the-counter drugs, and lack of data on amount of walking. Conclusions: Therapeutic classes already identified as impacting the ability to drive, such as benzodiazepines and antihistamines, are also associated with an increased risk of pedestrians being involved in a road traffic crash. This study on pedestrians highlights the necessity of improving awareness of the effect of these medicines on this category of road user. In a case-crossover study, Mélanie Née and colleagues examines the association between use of presciption medicine by pedestrians and risk of injurious road traffic crashes.Why was this study done?: What did the researchers do and find?: What do these findings mean?:

Suggested Citation

  • Mélanie Née & Marta Avalos & Audrey Luxcey & Benjamin Contrand & Louis-Rachid Salmi & Annie Fourrier-Réglat & Blandine Gadegbeku & Emmanuel Lagarde & Ludivine Orriols, 2017. "Prescription medicine use by pedestrians and the risk of injurious road traffic crashes: A case-crossover study," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(7), pages 1-19, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pmed00:1002347
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002347
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002347
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002347&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002347?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dai, Dajun, 2012. "Identifying clusters and risk factors of injuries in pedestrian–vehicle crashes in a GIS environment," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 206-214.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Prato, Carlo G. & Kaplan, Sigal & Patrier, Alexandre & Rasmussen, Thomas K., 2019. "Integrating police reports with geographic information system resources for uncovering patterns of pedestrian crashes in Denmark," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 10-23.
    2. Jung, Soyoung & Qin, Xiao & Oh, Cheol, 2016. "Improving strategic policies for pedestrian safety enhancement using classification tree modeling," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 53-64.
    3. Ke Nie & Zhensheng Wang & Qingyun Du & Fu Ren & Qin Tian, 2015. "A Network-Constrained Integrated Method for Detecting Spatial Cluster and Risk Location of Traffic Crash: A Case Study from Wuhan, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-16, March.
    4. Chen, Cong & Zhang, Su & Zhang, Guohui & Bogus, Susan M. & Valentin, Vanessa, 2014. "Discovering temporal and spatial patterns and characteristics of pavement distress condition data on major corridors in New Mexico," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 148-158.
    5. Loidl, Martin & Traun, Christoph & Wallentin, Gudrun, 2016. "Spatial patterns and temporal dynamics of urban bicycle crashes—A case study from Salzburg (Austria)," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 38-50.
    6. Miao, Congcong & Chen, Xiang & Zhang, Chuanrong, 2024. "Assessing network-based traffic crash risk using prospective space-time scan statistic method," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    7. Hei Gao & Zike Xu & Yu Chen & Yutian Lu & Jian Lin, 2022. "Walking Environment and Obesity: A Gender-Specific Association Study in Shanghai," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(4), pages 1-16, February.
    8. Roni Utriainen & Markus Pöllänen, 2020. "Prioritizing Safety or Traffic Flow? Qualitative Study on Highly Automated Vehicles’ Potential to Prevent Pedestrian Crashes with Two Different Ambitions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-15, April.
    9. Zeyang Cheng & Zhenshan Zu & Jian Lu, 2018. "Traffic Crash Evolution Characteristic Analysis and Spatiotemporal Hotspot Identification of Urban Road Intersections," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-17, December.
    10. Su, Shiliang & Zhou, Hao & Xu, Mengya & Ru, Hu & Wang, Wen & Weng, Min, 2019. "Auditing street walkability and associated social inequalities for planning implications," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 62-76.
    11. Nadine Schuurman & Blake Byron Walker & David Swanlund & Ofer Amram & Natalie L. Yanchar, 2020. "Qualitative Field Observation of Pedestrian Injury Hotspots: A Mixed-Methods Approach for Developing Built- and Socioeconomic-Environmental Risk Signatures," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(6), pages 1-15, March.
    12. Xiaoling Li & Chunliang Xiu & Ye Wei & Hong S. He, 2020. "Evaluating Methodology for the Service Extent of Refugee Parks in Changchun, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(14), pages 1-16, July.
    13. Bajada, Thérèse & Attard, Maria, 2021. "A typological and spatial analysis of pedestrian fatalities and injuries in Malta," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    14. Anatolie Coșciug & Silviu Marian Ciobanu & József Benedek, 2017. "The Safety of Transnational Imported Second-Hand Cars: A Case Study on Vehicle-to-Vehicle Crashes in Romania," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-14, December.
    15. Young, Jason & Park, Peter Y., 2014. "Hotzone identification with GIS-based post-network screening analysis," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 106-120.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pmed00:1002347. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosmedicine (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.