Pedestrian injuries and fatalities by patterns in reported road traffic crashes--Islamabad.

Objective: To find the main cause behind pedestrian injuries and fatalities and to categorise the information on the basis of key indicators.

Methods: The retrospective study was conducted in Islamabad, Pakistan, and was based on the officially-lodged First Information Reports of roadside accidents involving pedestrians over a period of 3 years from January 1, 2008, to December 31, 2010. The reports were collected from the Islamabad Police Department and relevant information was extracted on a pre-designed questionnaire having 40 kinds of variables. This study is limited only to causative factors and presentation of data according to age, gender, day and month which was analysed using simple descriptive percentage technique in SPSS 17.

Results: During the period covered by the study, there were 250 reported fatal traffic accidents causing 270 fatalities. Pedestrians were involved in 141 (56%) of these accidents in which there were 144 (53.3%) fatalities. Among the fatalities, there were 114 (79%) males and 30 (21%) females. Fatal accidents on midweek Wednesday were 27 (19%) which was more than the other days of the week. The highest number of pedestrian-related fatal accidents occurred in December 19 (13.5%). Over-speeding was the major causing factor 42 (29.8%) behind the fatalities.

Conclusion: Drivers are not giving the right of way to pedestrians and the pedestrians also did not use facilities like footpaths, zebra crossings etc.