TY - JOUR PY - 2020// TI - Incidence of law enforcement officer fatalities related to motor vehicle accidents JO - International journal of injury control and safety promotion A1 - Bir, Cynthia A1 - Padillo, Ricardo A1 - Rajaram, Pranav A1 - Inaba, Kenji SP - ePub EP - ePub VL - ePub IS - ePub N2 - A recent FBI report indicates that motor vehicle accidents (MVA) account for 71% of accidental law enforcement officer (LEO) fatalities. To better understand the factors surrounding these fatalities, a review of cases reported to the Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP) was conducted. A total of 738 MVA fatalities over ten years were included in this analysis. When comparing younger (<34 years) to older officers (≥ 35 years), there was a statistically significant difference with more younger officers reported to have been going at a high rate of speed at the time of the accident (p = 0.011) and were involved more often in single car accidents (p = 0.0207). The data also indicated a fatality rate of 5.4 fatalities per 100,000 officers annually; twice that of other professionals involving high speed operations. Even given the downward trend of MVA fatalities, policy changes and training to help reduce these number of fatalities is warranted.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 1745-7300 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17457300.2020.1858114 ID - ref1 ER -