Iranian Red Crescent Medical Journal Iran Red Crescent Med J 2011; 13(8):530-536 ©Iranian Red Crescent Medical Journal ORIGINAL ARTICLE Investigating the Relative Risk Factors of Injuries Caused by Accidents on Roads in the Mashhad Area in 2007

Background: Currently, accidents are the second highest cause of death in most societies. Traffic accidents account for the largest proportion of accidental deaths. The aim of this report was to identify the accidents that cause casualties on the roads around Mashhad. Methods: This study was a case-control study, where the cases were drivers who had accidents resulted in cas-ualties, and the controls were drivers who had accidents in the same locations without casualties. Variables included age, sex, seatbelt use, spontaneous combustion, entrapment within the vehicle, ejection from the vehi-cle, music playing in the vehicle at the time of the accident, use of cell phone, smoking at the time of the acci-dent, the direction of the accident, the time of day, and the model of the vehicle. Results: Interviews were conducted with the 90 % of the cases and the 93 % of the controls who consented to being interviewed. Females accounted for 16.2 % of the case group and 23.4 % of the control group, and males comprised 83.8 % of the cases and 76.6 % of the controls. The average age of the case group was 35.5±10.5 and of the control group was 39.4±9.8 years. The use of a seatbelt as a safety factor was significantly greater in the control group (OR=0.44). Combustion occurred in approximately 21 % of the accidents in the case group, but in only 1.3 % of the accidents in the control group. Being trapped in and being ejected from the vehicle wer