Academic Journal
Alcohol-related fatal-and-injury traffic crashes in Türkiye (2015-2024): temporal trends and an ecological evaluation of alcohol control policies.
| Τίτλος: | Alcohol-related fatal-and-injury traffic crashes in Türkiye (2015-2024): temporal trends and an ecological evaluation of alcohol control policies. |
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| Συγγραφείς: | Acat O; Faculty of Medicine, Karamanoglu Mehmetbey University, Public Health, Karaman, Turkey. omeracat@kmu.edu.tr., İmre O; Faculty of Medicine, Karamanoglu Mehmetbey University, Psychiatry, Karaman, Turkey., Ulusal O; Faculty of Medicine, Karamanoglu Mehmetbey University, Public Health, Karaman, Turkey., Çağlar S; Faculty of Medicine, Karamanoglu Mehmetbey University, Public Health, Karaman, Turkey., Kara F; Faculty of Medıcıne, Selcuk Unıversıty, Public Health, Konya, Turkey. |
| Πηγή: | BMC public health [BMC Public Health] 2026 May 20; Vol. 26 (1). Date of Electronic Publication: 2026 May 20. |
| Τύπος έκδοσης: | Journal Article |
| Γλώσσα: | English |
| Στοιχεία περιοδικού: | Publisher: BioMed Central Country of Publication: England NLM ID: 100968562 Publication Model: Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1471-2458 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 14712458 NLM ISO Abbreviation: BMC Public Health Subsets: MEDLINE |
| Imprint Name(s): | Original Publication: London : BioMed Central, [2001- |
| Ιατρικοί όροι (MeSH): | Accidents, Traffic*/mortality , Accidents, Traffic*/statistics & numerical data , Accidents, Traffic*/trends , Wounds and Injuries*/epidemiology , Wounds and Injuries*/mortality , Driving Under the Influence*/prevention & control , Driving Under the Influence*/statistics & numerical data, Turkey/epidemiology ; Humans |
| Περίληψη: | Background: Alcohol-impaired driving is a well-established and preventable cause of road traffic deaths and injuries. This study examined national time trends in the relative burden of alcohol-related fatal-and-injury road traffic crashes in Türkiye between 2015 and 2024 and interpreted the findings within an ecological policy and enforcement context. Methods: We conducted a national ecological time-trend analysis using annual aggregate road traffic crash statistics from the Turkish Statistical Institute for 2015-2024. The outcome was the annual count of alcohol-related crashes resulting in death or injury. To estimate changes in the relative burden over time, the natural logarithm of the annual total number of fatal-and-injury crashes was included as an offset. Temporal trends were first assessed using Poisson regression; after overdispersion was identified, estimates were re-evaluated using negative binomial regression. Results are reported as incidence rate ratios (IRR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results: The proportion of alcohol-related fatal-and-injury crashes among all fatal-and-injury crashes declined from 2.13% in 2015 to 0.72% in 2024. In the Poisson model, calendar year was negatively associated with the relative burden (IRR 0.883; 95% CI 0.880-0.887; p < 0.001), although model fit indicated overdispersion. In the negative binomial model, the direction of the association remained negative but was not statistically significant (IRR 0.883; 95% CI 0.709-1.097; p = 0.260). Sensitivity analyses excluding 2020 alone and excluding both 2019 and 2020 yielded nearly identical estimates, indicating that the negative but non-significant trend was not materially driven by potentially atypical pandemic-period observations. Conclusions: Descriptive data showed a marked decline in the relative burden of alcohol-related fatal-and-injury road traffic crashes in Türkiye from 2015 to 2024. However, negative binomial regression did not confirm a statistically significant temporal trend, indicating that model-based evidence should be interpreted cautiously. Interpretation should consider the ecological nature of the data and the possibility of time-varying enforcement intensity, detection, and reporting practices. (© 2026. The Author(s).) |
| Competing Interests: | Declarations. The manuscript submitted to this journal has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Ethics approval and consent to participate: This study used only publicly available, anonymised secondary data (open-access statistics from the Turkish Statistical Institute [TurkStat]). No individual-level identifiable data were collected or analysed; therefore, ethics committee approval was not required. Consent for publication: Not applicable. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests. |
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| Contributed Indexing: | Keywords: Alcohol-related crashes; Enforcement; Road safety; Road traffic injury; Time trend; Türkiye |
| Entry Date(s): | Date Created: 20260521 Date Completed: 20260713 Latest Revision: 20260726 |
| Update Code: | 20260726 |
| PubMed Central ID: | PMC13360529 |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s12889-026-27792-5 |
| PMID: | 42163209 |
| Βάση Δεδομένων: | MEDLINE |
| ISSN: | 1471-2458 |
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| DOI: | 10.1186/s12889-026-27792-5 |