Suicides in road traffic

What can be done to prevent suicides that occur in road traffic is essentially an entirely unexplored area in the scientific literature [1]. These suicides happen not only through drivers intentionally crashing a vehicle but also, for example, through pedestrians in various ways ending up in front of vehicles or on roadways. Little is known about why and how these methods are used and how they can be distinguished from accidents, which is necessary to design and evaluate interventions that can reduce suicides in road traffic, in accordance with the Government's interim goal of halving the number of road traffic fatalities by 2030 [2]. 

An important first step has been that since 2010, the Swedish Transport Administration has made significant efforts to better determine whether deaths in road traffic were due to suicide, accident, or natural causes [3], which has been the basis for establishing that about 10% of road traffic fatalities are due to suicide [3, 4]. Through collaboration with Kenneth Svensson at the Swedish Transport Administration, NASP now also has access to extracts from the Deep Study Client database, containing many different parameters about the deaths that have occurred in road traffic in Sweden from 2010 to 2022, as well as information about third parties who have died in these incidents. 

Research is currently underway at NASP to follow up on previous analyses [3] and better answer what distinguishes suicides from accidents in road traffic, and what has been done and could further be done to particularly reduce suicides in road traffic.

References

[1] Okolie et al. 2020. Means restriction for the prevention of suicide on roads. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32966589/
[2] Nollvisionen – tillsammans räddar vi liv. https://bransch.trafikverket.se/for-dig-i-branschen/samarbete-med-branschen/Samarbeten-for-trafiksakerhet/tillsammans-for-nollvisionen/
[3] Which deaths in road traffic are suicides? 2014. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1363428/FULLTEXT01.pdf
[4] Accident or suicide? Improvement in the classification of suicides among road traffic fatalities in Sweden by extended psychosocial investigations, during the years 2010-2019. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35249619/