An Unexpected Road Hazard: Obesity - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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obese drivers are more likely than normal weight drivers to die in a car crash.
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But among the obese, the higher the B.M.I., the more likely a driver was to die in an accident.
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Do obese people wear their seat belts properly? Do they fit in them? Do these people eat while driving? Do they use the car more often, creating more chances of accidents?
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The reasons for the association are unclear, but they probably involve both vehicle design and the poorer health of obese people.
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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.
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Hoffman, Jan. "An Unexpected Road Hazard: Obesity." New York Times (blog). N.p., 21 Jan. 2013. Web. 12 Feb. 2013. New studies now show that obesity has other risks. From statistics on height and weight from drivers who have been in a car accident with at least fatality, they were categorized based on BMI (Body Mass Index). Based on this data, the higher the BMI, the more likely a driver was to die in an accident. The rationality behind the associations are unclear, but they probably involve the poor health of obese people and vehicle design, because crash-tests are usually done with average-sized adult and human dummies. Other factors that could have affected death rates could not explain these differences.
