Obesity - they're all out to get us.

And I thought we knew all the risks of obesity - diabetes, hypertension, joint wear and tear, increased prevalence of cancer, inability to get stylish clothes, yobbos shouting out rude things in the street etc. etc.  Well it appears there's another one.  Obese people face a higher risk of dying in a car accident.  Geez, as if it wasn't tough enough....

Should the bridge be raised, or the river be lowered?  Given that the majority of the population is overweight or obese, perhaps it would be wise for car manufacturers to take into account the bulk (pardon the pun) of their clients' needs.  If seatbelts and airbags are designed for so-called normal weight car occupants, aren't they discounting the needs of 2/3rds of their customers/passengers.

Lessons: 

1.  People - no matter what your weight - put on your seatbelt.  If it doesn't fit - get one that does.  Understand that there is now evidence of another compelling reason to reduce weight - obese people suffer more complications and greater mortality as a result of car accidents.  

2.  Car manufacturers - please put some research and development dollars into safety equipment that meets the needs of the majority of the population.  Whichever company does it first - it will win you kudos and perhaps even a bigger market share.  A win/win in any language.

Obese more likely to die in car accidents: study

Published: January 23, 2013 - 7:41AM

The cause could be that safety in cars is engineered for people of normal weight, not for the obese, they said. Obese people face a much higher risk - of up to 80 percent - of dying in a car collision compared with people of normal weight, researchers reported Monday in a specialist journal.

Transport safety scientists Thomas Rice of the University of California at Berkeley and Motao Zhu of the University of West Virginia delved into a US databank on road accidents, the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS).

They dug out data from 1996 to 2008, covering more than 57,000 collisions that involved two cars. This was whittled down to cases in which both parties involved in the collision had been driving vehicles of similar size and types.

The team then compared the risk of fatality against the victim's estimated body mass index (BMI), a benchmark of fat, which is calculated by taking one's weight in kilograms and dividing it by one's height in metres squared.

An adult with a BMI of between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered of normal weight. Below this is considered underweight. Between 25.0 and 29.9 is considered overweight; and 30.0 or above is obese.

The researchers found an increase in risk of 19 percent for underweight drivers compared with counterparts of normal weight.

For those with BMI of 30 to 34.9, the increased risk was 21 percent; for BMI of 35-39.9, it was 51 percent; and for the extremely obese, with BMI of 40.0 or above, it was 80 percent.

Obese women were at even greater risk. Among those in the 35-39.9 BMI category, the risk of death was double compared with people of normal weight.

The estimates were made after potentially confounding factors -- age and alcohol use, for instance -- were taken into account. Further work is needed to explain the big differences, but the researchers noted that obese people suffer different injuries from normal-weight individuals in car accidents.

Data from intensive-care units say that obese patients tend to have more chest injuries and fewer head injuries, are likelier to have more complications, require longer hospital stays -- and are likelier to die of their injuries.

Another question is whether obese people properly use their seat belt, rather than leave it unbuckled or partially fastened because it is uncomfortable -- and whether safety designs in cars are flawed.

Crash tests, conducted with cadavers, found that in a frontal collision, people of normal weight lurched forward slightly before the seat belt engaged the pelvis bone to prevent further movement, says the study.

But obese cadavers moved substantially forward from the seat, especially in the lower body. This was because abdominal fat acted as a spongy padding, slowing the time it took for the belt to tighten across the lap.  "The ability of passenger vehicles to protect overweight or obese occupants may have increasing important public health occupations," says the study, published in the Emergency Medicine Journal.

In the United States, "currently more than 33 percent of adult men and 35 percent of adult women are obese," the paper notes. "It may be the case that passenger vehicles are well designed to protect normal-weight vehicle occupants but are deficient in protecting overweight or obese patients."

The final dataset used in the study entailed 3,403 pairs of drivers for whom data on weight, age, seat belt use and airbag deployment were available. Almost half of these drivers were of normal weight; one in three was overweight; and almost one in five (18 percent) was obese.

AFP

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/drive/motor-news/obese-more-likely-to-die-in-car-accidents-study-20130123-2d5v8.html