Obese people more likely to die in car crashes

New Scientist ^ | March 2, 2002 | Kurt Kleiner

[Paradox]

Obese people more likely to die in car crashes

09:30 30 March 02

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition

Heavier people are more likely to be killed or seriously injured in car accidents than lighter people, according to new research.

That could mean car designers will have to build in new safety features to compensate for the extra hazards facing overweight passengers. In the US, car manufacturers have already had to redesign air bags so they inflate to lower pressures, making them less of a danger to smaller women and children. But no one yet knows what it is that puts overweight passengers at extra risk.

A study carried out in Seattle, Washington, looked at more than 26,000 people who had been involved in car crashes, and found that heavier people were at far more risk. People weighing between 100 and 119 kilograms are almost two-and-a-half times as likely to die in a crash as people weighing less than 60 kilograms.

And importantly, the same trend held up when the researchers looked at body mass index (BMI) - a measure that takes height as well as weight into account. Someone 1.8 metres tall weighing 126 kilograms would have a BMI of 39, but so would a person 1.5 metres tall weighing 88 kilograms. People are said to be obese if their BMI is 30 or over.

The study found that people with a BMI of 35 to 39 are over twice as likely to die in a crash compared with people with BMIs of about 20. It is not just total weight, but obesity itself that's dangerous.

Crash-test dummies

While they do not yet know why this is the case, the evidence is worth pursuing, says Charles Mock, a surgeon and epidemiologist at the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center in Seattle, who led the research team. He thinks one answer may be for safety authorities to use heavier crash-test dummies when certifying cars as safe to drive.

Crash tests normally use dummies that represent standard-sized males weighing about 78 kilograms. Recently, smaller crash-test dummies have also been used to represent children inside crashing cars. But larger and heavier dummies are not used, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in Washington DC told New Scientist.

The reasons for the higher injury and death rates are far from clear. Mock speculates that car interiors might not be suitably designed for heavy people. Or obese people, with health problems such as high blood pressure or diabetes, could be finding it tougher to recover from injury.

Richard Kent, an expert in impact biomechanics at the University of Virginia, thinks the new research has established a legitimate connection between obesity and severe injury or death. Because the research used BMI data, it has not confused taller (and therefore heavier than average) people with those who are overweight.

People who are obese might also be at risk because seat belts do not hold them as securely in a crash. "For example, a large amount of [fat] tissue between the restraint system and the bony thorax acts much like a winter coat: it introduces "slack" into the restraint system and decreases its performance," Kent says.

Journal reference: Accident Analysis and Prevention (vol 34, p 221)

Kurt Kleiner

[Capt. Tom]

There's a class action suit in here somewhere just waiting to come out.

More than likely an increase in insurance premiums for us overweight people. - Tom

[jlogajan]

Mine was 16.5

Good heavens! No wonder you won't be hurt. Does a piece of paper get hurt in a collision? I think not.

However, you shouldn't drive in convertibles or with the windows open. You might get blown out. :-)

[LibertarianLiz]

Let's just reduce this to basics - "Obese people more likely to die."

I don't think obese people are any more likely to die than anyone else. "No one gets outta here alive."

[AnnaZ]

However, you shouldn't drive in convertibles or with the windows open. You might get blown out. :-)

All right, all right, that's enough.

And now I'm off to buy Twinkies. If a larger can is the new "politically incorrect", I gotta get me one. I'll  smoke a butt, ingest "empty calories", get an NRA sticker on my SUV and drive by the local DemocRAT office with Eminem on "10".

Come and get me! (For the chil'run!)

[GailA]

I LOVE my VOYGER van plenty of room to haul things to by grandson when we go visit. And room to spare for "chubby" grand parents.

[AnnaZ]

And I love my jacked-up Cherokee. Little League, school friends, stroller, groceries, and miles of unimpeded vision on LA's "freeways of death to the too late to notice/brake from the can't-see-past-the-next-bumper view of a rice burner". Chubby or not.

Next thing you know they'll reduce our options, like other statist powers gone wrong:

Not chubby, all Trabi.

[jlogajan]

it still may be worse in a crash than being on the skinny side.

But they are specifically saying that that is not the case -- lean body mass is not correlative with increased death rates, only high fat ratios. Yeah, they use the BMI which is not helpful for body building individuals, but works well for aggregate numbers, the average individual.

Also imagine that a thin guy, such as myself, needs somthing to hold our joints together in event of an impact. That is muscle. Otherwise the bones, as mass concentrations, will rip the little teeny tiny rubber bands I call my muscles from the momentum they pick up from the acceleration/deceleration of the crash.

[MotleyGirl70]

Will there be a fat tax added to insurance premiums?

[MotleyGirl70]

ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[MotleyGirl70]

I had a conversation once with a Vietnam vet who said he grew up in a dirt floored cabin in Alabama. He told a story of a fat uncle who was standing on a ground sled being pulled by the mule he was driving. It seems the fat uncle lost his balance on a bump and fell off the sled. This would be a fall from a flat surface no more than six inches off the ground and moving no more than two miles per hour. He said his uncle "busted open like a ripe watermelon and his guts spilled out". A MULE....LOLOLOLOL

BTW, How does one "drive" a mule? I'd love to know.

[MotleyGirl70]

Fat people never get run over while jogging, so it’s a wash.

Okay, now I have to bookmark this thread for the laugh factor.

[AnnaZ]

Glad someone got it.

 

;^)

 

I was in (the former east) Germany in '92, and discarded Trabis littered the side of the road like empty pop cans. (Except empty pop cans actually have some mettle er, uh metal to them.)

[RipSawyer]

How does one "drive" a mule? Now I am laughing my you know what off. One "drives" a mule the same way one "drives" a harness racing horse, with a set of long reins or "lines" as we used to call them in the country. Go up to Lancaster county Pennsylvania and you can still see people "driving" mules everyday. Things were not always done with internal combustion engines, you know.

[flyervet]

"I did not consider it a ridiculous story, only tragic.

Wow. You believed that a man, however large, fell only six inches at two miles per hour and "busted open like a ripe watermelon and his guts spilled out". That IS tragic.

Ridiculous too.

Perhaps you have no knowledge of the dangers of morbid obesity.

Not only do I have knowledge of the dangers of morbid obesity, but I also have knowledge of basic anatomy. HINT: falling six inches very slowly onto a flat surface will not cause a human body to become "busted open like a ripe watermelon and his guts spilled out".

I had an uncle myself who weighed over 500 pounds at one time. I am sure if he had taken any kind of a fall at all it would have been disastrous.

I'm sure it would have been. He could have broken a leg or even his pelvis, at that weight. He could have damaged his internal organs. But unless he were falling from a very great height and/or at a great speed, he would most certainly have not "busted open like a ripe watermelon and his guts spilled out".

[flyervet]

Lord knows something went around that day!

[flyervet]

No, that was exactly the story as reported. The fat uncle ""busted open like a ripe watermelon and his guts spilled out".

[SarahW]

You can't read. :) He busted open like a watermelon, not like a "watermelon dropped from six inches"

[flyervet]

LOL! I guess I just fixated on the uncle "busted open like a ripe watermelon and his guts spilled out".

[Texaggie79]

I was going to post those two world record fat twins on the motorcycles but I couldn't find it so:

[RipSawyer]

I didn't mean to give you the impression that the man fell six inches. He would have been standing up on that surface that was only six inches off the ground. Picture a rather tall individual, grossly overweight, pitching forward on to his belly on a hard roadbed. It would be similiar to a very fat man falling off a slow moving skateboard. I have no problem believing his belly could have burst open. At any rate I am sorry I started this. I was merely trying to illustrate that it seems to me to be a very simple matter as to why an obese person would be more likely to suffer catastrophic injury than a person of normal weight.