Obesity adds to chances of death in a car crash

Being obese and male increases your chances of dying in a car crash, according to a team at the Injury Research Center of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

Being moderately overweight might help cushion the blow of a crash, being very slim will also only increase your chances of death.

Interestingly, the team also found that obesity did not affect women's risk of death from such crashes. Their study was funded by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the US.

"Men with the highest body mass index (BMI) were at greatest risk for death from front or left-side collisions, especially at high speeds" says lead author Shankuan Zhu, MD, PhD, assistant professor of family & community medicine. "Men with the lowest BMI also had higher death rates than the lowest rates, which were found among overweight, but not obese, men."

Their findings document another potential major health risk associated with obesity among men, and may have important implications for identifying high-risk drivers and for interventions in areas such as obesity, traffic safety policy, and motor vehicle design.

The researchers suggest that the unexplained reasons for the gender difference in BMI and motor vehicle fatality might be, in part, the difference in body habitus or body shape between men and women, and should be studied further. Their findings may also lend credence to the theory of a "˜cushioning effect' for slightly overweight men that might protect them from fatal injury in a crash, according to Dr Zhu.

The team studied more than 22,000 drivers, ages 16 and older, using data collected from 1997 to 2001 by the National Automotive Sampling System, Crashworthiness Data System, a data collection system sponsored by the US Department of Transportation.