oa Trends and Patterns of WorkRelated Road Traffic Injuries involving Heavy Vehicles in Qatar

Introduction Qatar is a rapidly developing high-income country in the Middle East. It has very diverse expatriate worker population that is increasing as the road infrastructure and FIFA World Cup projects ramp up for 2022. As a result, Heavy Vehicles (HVs) are a very common sight in Qatar. However, the effect of the increased volume of HVs, on road safety and work-related road traffic injuries (WRTIs) in Qatar has not been reported previously. This study aims to analyze the work related injuries caused by heavy vehicles and is one of the first few studies in this area. It was conducted as part of a larger ‘A Unified Registry for Workplace Injury Prevention in Qatar’ grant [NPRP 7-1120-3-288] funded by the Qatar Foundation and designed to initiate and implement a targeted unified workplace injury registry to inform policies and programs to reduce the health burden, in terms of deaths and disabilities, and the healthcare costs from WRI's in Qatar Methods A free text search using heavy vehicle terms like ‘crane’, ‘truck’, ‘bulldozer’ etc. was carried out on data from the Trauma Registry. All patients, treated for WRTI at Hamad Trauma Center (HTC) from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2016 were included. The data was analyzed according to road user type and other epidemiologic characteristics. The data did not include bus-related injuries. Results Forty percent (40%) of all WRTIs in Qatar were due to heavy vehicles. 57% of the injured were from the transportation industry. Approximately 20% of the injured were pedestrians. 83.8% of the victims were truck drivers and only 8% of them were restrained. The driver victims were involved in head-on collisions (32%) and fixed object crashes (22%). It was also found that pedestrians and falling object victims had more severe injuries compared to others. Conclusions HV-WRTIs are underappreciated as a major cause of severe WRTI and mortality in Qatar. Occupational safety programs should focus on decreasing operating hours by HV drivers & increasing restraint use, pedestrian worksite environmental modifications & HV maintenance and repair standards. The limited available evidence necessitates more focused data capture and analysis in future.