Association of Life Stress with Road Accidents

Road accidents are a major cause of health problems in the world, and lifestyle stress is one of the most important factors in the occurrence of these events.
The aim of this study was to determine the association between life stress and road accidents.
A case-control study was conducted in Hamadan in 2013. The sampling method was carried out in two stages: the first stage involved simple randomization, and the second stage was convenient sampling. The sample size consisted of 103 people who referred to the car accident insurance centers (case group: regarding road accidents), and 206 people who referred to the police stations (control group: no accident). The measurement tool was a two-part self-reporting questionnaire that included information regarding demographic and lifestyle stress. The data was analyzed by the Chi-square test and Logistic regression based on age and sex. The significance level of all the tests was considered as less than 0.05.
The results indicated that life stresses (financial problems, family arguments, occupational problems, and night shifts), and stresses during driving (retaliatory or angry reactions during driving, fear of possible damage during driving, and poor road conditions) have a significant difference between the two groups (p = 0.05), such that the odds of road accidents caused by lifestyle stress in the case group was about three times more than the control group (P = 0.001, OR = 2.958, 95% CI = 1.66–5.26).
The results of this study demonstrated the role of lifestyle stress as a contributing factor to road accidents; so, it can be concluded that reducing the level of these stresses may prevent such accidents.