BMJ 2001;322:829-830 ( 7 April )

Papers

Fatigue, alcohol, and serious road crashes in France: factorial study of national data

Editorial by Feyer

P Philip, consultant ^a, F Vervialle, statistician ^b, P Le Breton, statistician ^b, J Taillard, research assistant ^a, J A Horne, professor ^c. 

^a Clinique du Sommeil, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire, Bordeaux 33076, France, ^b Service d'Études Techniques des Routes et Autoroutes, Bagneux, France, ^c Sleep Research Laboratory, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU

Correspondence to: P Philip pierrephilip@compuserve.com

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

France has a high rate of road traffic crashes.¹ Although driver fatigue may be an important factor,^2-4 it has not been investigated in France, and no comparisons have been made with alcohol related crashes.⁵ We investigated the role of fatigue in serious road crashes using the French national database.¹

	Methods and results

We obtained data from the French Ministry of Transport on all road crashes during 1994-8 (640 670) in which at least one person was severely injured (confirmed by paramedics) or died. Crashes were attended by police officers, who completed a standard ministry questionnaire that covered time of incident, location, road and weather conditions, vehicles involved, mechanical defects, health of driver, and alcohol consumption as well as giving summaries of interviews and probable causes.

As crashes related to fatigue can be difficult to identify, we applied the strict criteria of Horne and Reyner to eliminate many of the confounding factors.² We assessed only single . . . [Full text of this article]

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