Pregnancy Tied to Car Crash Risk

Canadian researchers have determined that pregnant women face a much higher risk of being in a serious car crash. This is not the sort of stuff they taught you when you were in Driver's Ed at 16. It seems they studied about half a million women who gave birth between 2006 and 2011 and found they were 42 percent more likely to be in a traffic accident when they were expecting. 

Donald Redelmeier, a senior scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto and lead author of the study, says he became concerned about driving safety after talking to pregnant patients. “They often ask me about flying on planes, sitting in hot tubs and scuba diving, but never have I been asked about traffic accidents, despite the possible threat.” Redelmeier said he decided to investigate the risk when he realized no one had before. “Because pregnancy isn’t an illness and road crash isn’t a medical disease, it simply wasn’t in any of the textbooks,” he said.

The study found that nearly one out of fifty women will be involved in a car crash while pregnant – a figure on par with the risk of preeclampsia, a condition marked by high blood pressure during pregnancy. It is not entirely clear why pregnant women are at increased risk, but the study suggests that a mix of the stress and other pregnancy symptoms like nausea, fatigue, back pain and sleeplessness might make it harder to concentrate on the road.

While the results of this study are interesting, it’s important not to stigmatize pregnant women based on these findings. In other words: being pregnant while driving is a far cry from driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or even texting at the wheel. What should pregnant women understand from the findings? Redelmeier’s advice is to get back to the basics of road safety, “the kind of stuff they taught you in Driver's Education: Full stop at red lights, signal turns, avoid driving when feeling tired, hanging up cellular phones and minimizing distractions." According to Redelmeier, “The everyday sloppiness you can get away with, you may not be able to when you’re off-balance during pregnancy,” he said.