Study Reveals Pregnant Women In 2nd Trimester More Likely To Be Involved In A Car Crash

reported about an interesting new study last week from CMAJ, the Canadian Medical Assn. Journal, regarding
the frequency of car accidents of pregnant women. The study identified
more than 500,000 women who gave birth in Ontario during a five-year period
from 2006 to 2011. They combed through data from Ontario hospitals to see how
often they got into serious car crashes during the three years before they
became pregnant; during each trimester of their pregnancy; and for the first
year after their babies were born. The researchers counted up a total of 6,922
car crashes, which worked out to about 4.55 car crashes per 1,000 women per
year. That was more than double the population-wide average of roughly 2
crashes per 1,000 people per year. During the first month of the first
trimester of pregnancy, the crash rate fell slightly to 4.33 crashes per 1,000
women, the researchers found. However, that difference was too small for the
drop to be considered statistically significant.