Trends and disparities in motor vehicle collision injuries in Washington, D.C.

Abstract

Nonfatal traffic injuries are ~40 times more frequent than traffic fatalities in the United States, but little is known about racial or ethnic disparities in injury-only collisions because commonly used databases report racial/ethnic data only for fatalities. Crash data from police departments (e.g., Vision Zero) are subject to error and bias arising from changing patterns of police intervention and increased use of alternative or automated traffic enforcement. Here, we leverage Trauma Registry data to quantify racial/ethnic, temporal, and spatial patterns of trauma injuries from motor vehicle collisions among adults in Washington, D.C. and compare results to the commonly used Vision Zero database. We report results by year (2019–2023), road user type (motorists, pedestrians, cyclists, and other vulnerable road users), and ZIP code tabulation area (ZCTA) to identify primary contributors to total injury rates and racial/ethnic disparities. Between 2019 and 2023, the overall incidence rate (IR) rose from 69 to 132 per 100,000 persons per year and increased among all road user types and races/ethnicities. Compared to white people, the incidence rate ratio (IRR) was ≥4.3 among Black/African American people and ≥2.9 among Hispanic/Latino people. The IRR between Black/African American vs. white motorists is ≥9.9. Disparities were observed across 21 of 26 ZCTAs, revealing that disparities cannot be explained by solely by higher minority populations in ZCTAs with more hazardous infrastructure. The commonly used Vision Zero dashboard suggests a downward trend in injury only crashes, but our analysis suggests that this trend is the result of a bias from reduced police intervention.