Obesity carries yet another surprising risk, according to a new study: obese drivers are more likely than normal weight drivers to die in a car crash.
The study, published in the Emergency Medicine Journal, also recorded information on seat-belt use, time of day of the accident, driver sex, driver alcohol use, air bag deployment and collision type.
The reasons for the association are unclear, but they probably involve both vehicle design and the poorer health of obese people. The authors cite one study using obese and normal cadavers, in which obese people had significantly more forward movement away from the vehicle seat before the seat belt engaged because the additional soft tissue prevented the belt from fitting tightly.
"This adds one more item to the long list of negative consequences of obesity," said the lead author, Thomas M. Rice, an epidemiologist with the Transportation Research and Education Center of the University of California, Berkeley. "It's one more reason to lose weight."
Other factors that might have affected fatality rates - the age and sex of the driver, the vehicle type, seat-belt use, alcohol use, air bag deployment and whether the collision was head-on or not - did not explain the differences between obese and normal weight drivers.
"Vehicle designers are teaching to the test - designing so that crash-test dummies do well," Dr Rice said. "But crash-test dummies are typically normal size adults and children. They're not designed to account for our nation's changing body types."
NICHOLAS BAKALAR
The study, published in the Emergency Medicine Journal, also recorded information on seat-belt use, time of day of the accident, driver sex, driver alcohol use, air bag deployment and collision type.
The reasons for the association are unclear, but they probably involve both vehicle design and the poorer health of obese people. The authors cite one study using obese and normal cadavers, in which obese people had significantly more forward movement away from the vehicle seat before the seat belt engaged because the additional soft tissue prevented the belt from fitting tightly.
"This adds one more item to the long list of negative consequences of obesity," said the lead author, Thomas M. Rice, an epidemiologist with the Transportation Research and Education Center of the University of California, Berkeley. "It's one more reason to lose weight."
Other factors that might have affected fatality rates - the age and sex of the driver, the vehicle type, seat-belt use, alcohol use, air bag deployment and whether the collision was head-on or not - did not explain the differences between obese and normal weight drivers.
"Vehicle designers are teaching to the test - designing so that crash-test dummies do well," Dr Rice said. "But crash-test dummies are typically normal size adults and children. They're not designed to account for our nation's changing body types."
NICHOLAS BAKALAR