Heat waves and fatal traffic crashes in the continental United States.

ABSTRACT:

Background

A better understanding of how heat waves affect fatal traffic crashes will be useful to promote awareness of drivers' vulnerability during an extreme heat event.

Objective and methods

We applied a time-stratified case-crossover design to examine associations between heat waves and fatal traffic crashes during May-September of 2001-2011 in the continental United States (US). Heat waves, defined as the daily mean temperature >95% threshold for ≥2 consecutive days, were derived using gridded 12.5 km² air temperatures from Phase 2 of the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS-2). Dates and locations of fatal traffic crash records were acquired from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Results

Results show a signifi

SUBMITTER: Wu CYH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6675573 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature