A French road accident trauma registry: first results

A systematic medical recording of each road injury in the Departement du Rhone has been made since January 1st 1995. General information on the crashes is collected, paying specific attention to the description of injuries which are coded according to AIS 90. In 1995, 7,871 crashes (vs 3,521 "officially") and 9,109 casualties (vs 4,817) were reported in the authors' registry. It is clear that the "official" statistics underestimate reality, and these underestimations depend closely on user type and injury severity. However, the authors focus essentially on injury descriptions. Some illustrations of these are proposed.