DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2018.v06i02.031

Pages: 626-628

We retrospectively investigated and compared the outcomes of swerving to avoid deer and colliding with deer in the Izu peninsula of Japan. We performed a retrospective medical chart review of all traumatized patients who were involved in motor vehicle accidents from January 2013 to December 2017 and who were treated by the staff of our department. Cases in which the accident did not involve deer were excluded from the analysis. The subjects were divided into two groups: the swerving group, which included patients who were injured after swerving to avoid hitting a deer; and the collision group, which included patients who were injured after colliding with the deer. The characteristics of the patients in the two groups were analyzed. In addition, we cooperated with the Ohito police office (the local police department of Izunokuni and Izu city), to investigate the number of deer-related accidents in 2017. There were 7 patients in the swerving group and 6 in the collision group. The detailed of mechanisms of the accidents in the swerving group were as follows: falling from a motorcycle (n=2), hitting trees along the road (n=1), hitting a guardrail (n=1), hitting an oncoming car (n=1), and falling off a cliff (n=1). There were no statistically significant differences with regard to sex, age, month, time, temperature, weather, estimated speed of the vehicle, vital signs on arrival, lactate level, injury severity score, revised trauma score, trauma and injury severity score, duration of admission or the survival ratio. The collision group included a significantly higher percentage of motorcycle users than the swerving group. The Ohito police (the local police department) manually investigated cases in response to our request and informed us that there were 40 deer-related car accidents that were reported to have occurred without injury in 2017. In this study, the outcome was not affected by swerving to avoid a deer or colliding with the deer; however, theoretical