Grant: Operating Grant

Each year in Canada, 125,000 motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) result in over 12,000 serious injuries, and 2,400 fatalities at a cost of $63 billion. Many drivers use medications that slow reaction time, cloud judgment and impair the skills required for safe driving. This problem may be increasing because of an aging population and increased use of impairing medications. Young drivers are also at high risk of crashing and may be particularly susceptible to the effects of impairing medications. Unfortunately, despite international efforts, the risk to road safety associated with most medications is poorly understood. This lack of knowledge prevents authorities from developing effective policy, public education campaigns, and medication warning labels designed to prevent people from driving while using impairing medications. Numerous studies have investigated the crash risk associated with prescription medications and some progress has already been made. European experts developed a consensus document that classifies medications according to suspected crash risk. Unfortunately, for most medications, there is little real world evidence to show whether or not they really increase the chance of crashing. Therefore this classification is based mostly on expert opinion and may be inaccurate. In this project, we will study the association of all major classes of prescription medications with crashes. We will do this by linking driver records and police crash reports with prescription records. This rich data will allow us to overcome many of the limitations of previous research. We will use sophisticated methods to find out if drivers who take medications are more likely to crash than other drivers and if they are more likely to crash when using medications than at other times. Our long term goal is to make our roads more safe. We plan to do this by providing evidence that will be used to develop road safety policy, public education campaigns, and medication warnings.