Just over a quarter of all patients admitted to Dublin's Beaumont Hospital for trauma over a three-year period sustained their injuries in road crashes, a new study has found.
The study looked at all trauma admissions over the past three years which necessitated hospital stays of three or more days. It established that 26.7 per cent of them were as a result of patients having been involved in crashes on the roads.
With the exception of falls, crashes were the single biggest reason for trauma admissions.
Some 60 per cent of those admitted as a result of crashes were aged between 17 and 40 years and were mostly male.
The majority of those injured in road crashes were drivers at 59.5 per cent, and almost half or 46.9 per cent of the crashes which resulted in hospital admission were single-vehicle accidents.
Dr Patricia Houlihan, an accident and emergency consultant at Beaumont, presented the findings at a seminar on road safety at the hospital last evening.
She said the study had not delved into the causes of the single-vehicle accidents but international data would suggest that speed, unrestrained drivers, alcohol or other pharmaceutical agents could be involved, in addition to drivers being unfamiliar with the road infrastructure.
There has been speculation that some single-vehicle accidents are attempted suicides but Dr Houlihan said this was not looked at.
Beaumont is the only large acute hospital in the Republic to compile a detailed trauma register and the study was based on data contained in the register.
Upwards of 10,000 people are injured in road accidents on Irish roads every year.