Child and adolescent bicycling injuries involving motor vehicle collisions

BACKGROUND: Bicycle-related injuries are among the most common recreational injuries for children in Canada; moreover, bicycle-motor vehicle collisions often result in serious injuries. This study seeks to examine environmental, motorist, and bicyclist characteristics of bicycle-motor vehicle collisions that resulted in police reported severe injuries in youth (< 18 years old) bicyclists, in Alberta, Canada. FINDINGS: Using Calgary and Edmonton police collision reports, 423 youth bicycle-motor vehicle collisions were identified from 2010 to 2014. Forty-three (10.2%) of these collisions resulted in major/fatal (severe) injuries. These severe injury cases were compared with the 380 youth bicycle-motor vehicle collisions resulting in minor or no injury (controls) using classification tree and logistic regression analyses. There were no driver or bicyclist characteristics with a significant effect on the odds of severe injury to youth bicyclists; however, lower odds were found on each of: divided roads with no barrier (aOR = 0.36; 95% CI: 0.13–0.97) or during peak traffic time (aOR = 0.44; 95% CI: 0.16–0.99). CONCLUSION: Personal and environment characteristics should be considered in future research and interventions focused on reducing severe youth bicycle-motor vehicle collision injuries. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s40621-019-0185-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.