Injuries in special transport services--situations and risk levels involving wheelchair users.

Previous research has shown that wheelchair-seated passengers using special transportation services (STS) have been injured without being involved in a vehicle crash. In order to estimate incident rate and societal costs for these vehicle-related injuries, the focus needs to be adjusted towards a traveler/incident-oriented perspective. The aim of the project was to utilize such a perspective, related to travelers using STS in Sweden. In order to address the chosen perspective, a mixed method approach was used, involving quantitative as well as qualitative research techniques applied on four different sets of data: one hospital-based record, two sets of STS incident report databases, and interviews with wheelchair-seated STS passengers. The results showed that the injury incidence rate in STS is considerable, i.e. 10 per 100,000 trips. However, this high incidence rate is not due to road traffic collisions, but to non-collision injury incidents involving many elderly and frail passengers, who easily sustain traumas ranging from minor to moderate. The costs were estimated to be 23 million USD per annum or 14 USD per trip. Results suggest that future injury prevention measures should focus on safety in boarding and alighting procedures, as well as the continuing development of WTORS.