Abstract

Background: Among all types of accidents, those caused by motor vehicles claim the largest toll of life and tend to be most serious, road traffic accidents (RTA) continues to be growing menace incurring heavy loss of valuable man –power, along with corresponding drain of potential economic growth of country.
Objective: Present study was taken up with the aim to assess the Socio demographic distribution of road traffic accidents and the pattern of craniofacial injuries occurred in RTA.
Materials and Methods: A Descriptive Cross sectional study was conducted on the post mortems of RTA cases. Convenient purposive sampling technique was applied to select the sample of 113 road traffic accident autopsies.
Results: Majority of the victims aged between 21 to 40 years (50.44%), most of the victims were males 104 (92.0%), and Hindus 102 (90.27%). More crashes 42 (37.17%) took place between 6:00 PM to 12:00 PM on weekends 62 (54.87%) at city cross roads 62 (54.87%). Most of the accidents occurred by heavy motor vehicle 45(39.82%). Most of the times in road traffic accidents, productive age group males (21-40 years) were injured or lost their life. More than fifty per cent of the accidents were found to occur during the weekend evenings from 6:00PM to 12:00PM. Conclusion: Since the road traffic traumas are worsening each year, to minimise the severity of injury, man's interaction with the motor car may have been somewhat modified by crash protection devices, such as helmets, seat belts and air bags.