Evaluation of fatal traffic accident cases that occurred in Tokat province

Aim: Traffic accidents are one of the important study subjects among forensic medical practices. In our study, it was aimed to evaluate the demographic characteristics of the deaths due to traffic accidents in Tokat province from a forensic perspective and to offer solutions to traffic accidents, which are an important public health problem for our country.
Materials and Methods: In this study, the dead examination and autopsy reports performed on traffic accident cases by Gaziosmanpaşa University Faculty of Medicine Department of Forensic Medicine between January 2013 and January 2018 were retrospectively examined, and a total of 138 cases were examined according to age, gender, scene of incident, place of death, cause of death, vehicle type. , were evaluated in terms of whether the victim was inside/outside the vehicle, driver/passenger/pedestrian, trauma area, bone fractures and the distribution of the cases according to months and years.
Results: In our study, 138 (33.1%) of a total of 419 death examination and autopsy cases performed by our Department between 2013 and 2017 were caused by traffic accidents, the average age of these cases was 45.42 (SD±23.25) and 111 of them were male (80.44%), 27 of whom were women (19.56%), the average age for men was 47.37 (SD±22.32), and for women this number was 37.37 (SD±25.61) and the cases were between the ages of 0-90. There was an increase in fatal traffic accidents in 2016 compared to other years, and when the frequency of occurrence by month was evaluated, it was determined that the most frequent fatal traffic accident was in September.
Conclusion: It was determined that there was an increase in the number of fatal traffic accidents in Tokat province within the specified five years, especially in the summer months, and that urban traffic accidents were more than out-of-city traffic accidents as a result of limited public transportation opportunities and people traveling more with their personal vehicles.