A vehicle occupant injury prediction algorithm based on road crash and emergency medical data

Introduction: Advanced Automatic Collision Notification (AACN) systems are an automobile safety technology designed to reduce the number of fatalities in traffic accidents by optimizing early treatment methods. AACN systems rely on robust injury prediction algorithms, however, despite the importance of time to treatment, current injury prediction algorithms used in AACN systems do not take this critical time period time into consideration. Method: This study developed a vehicle occupant injury prediction algorithm by using emergency transport time in addition to mass crash data, to determine the risk of serious injury for vehicle occupants in a road crash. Two sources of de-identified data were used: The South Australian Traffic Accident Reporting System (TARS) database and the highly detailed South Australian Serious Injury Database (SID). Firstly, the TARS data, a large statistical crash dataset, was imputed into a logistic regression analysis to produce a base injury prediction algorithm. The important effect of emergency transport time on the risk of death and serious injury was then independently quantified as an odds ratio (OR) from the SID. The ORs were converted into regression coefficients and subsequently introduced into the base injury prediction algorithm to produce an enhanced injury prediction algorithm. Results: The ORs calculated from the SID showed that the risk of death and serious injury increased with increasing transport time: 61–90 min (OR = 1.6), 91–120 min (OR = 3.3), and > 120 min (OR = 4.9), compared to a transport time of 60 min or less. An assessment of the base algorithm compared to the enhanced injury prediction algorithm through Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis, demonstrated a prediction accuracy improvement from AUC 0.70 to AUC 0.73 when evaluating the respective algorithms. The injury prediction calculations indicate that the impact of two risk factors, transport time and age-related decline in human injury tolerance, are significant, and both have a strong influence on the increased risk of serious injury. Conclusions: The impact of emergency transport time on the risk of fatal and serious injuries was determined from a relatively small, but data rich SID. Subsequently this was incorporated into an injury prediction algorithm constructed from the large (TARS) statistical crash data set to produce an enhanced injury prediction algorithm. Practical Application: By adding the effect of transport time to enhance the basic injury prediction algorithm, an AACN that incorporates such an algorithm can be used to determine the probability of death or serious injury due to delayed treatment. Further, such a system can be used to improve policies and procedures to optimize emergency transport time.