Serious road injuries in the Netherlands in 1993-2008: road casualties admitted to hospital with a MAIS score of at least 2; Description and justification of the estimation method. Until 2009 the term 'seriously injured road casualty' was generally used to indicate an inpatient. This is a casualty in a traffic crash who has been admitted into hospital for at least one night. However, it was found that not all inpatients were indeed seriously injured. Hence it was decided to include the true injury severity in the definition of seriously injured. Since 2009 a road crash casualty is not considered ‘seriously injured' unless he has been admitted into hospital for at least one night with an injury severity of at least 2. The injury severity is expressed according to the Maximum Abbreviated Injury Score (MAIS), an international measure used in medicine to describe the injury severity which ranges from 1 (minor) to 6 (maximal/fatal). However, according to this measure injury is only serious from MAIS 3 upward. Because we also wish to include casualties with 'moderate' injury (MAIS 2) and the most serious categories (MAIS 4 or higher), SWOV and the Dutch Ministry of Transport will from now on call the group of road crash casualties who have been admitted to hospital with injury of 2 or higher (expressed in MAIS) serious road injuries instead of seriously injured. As road safety policy aims to reduce the numbers of road fatalities and serious road injuries, it is important to know how many of these casualties there are in the Netherlands.
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