Research Article Volume 3 Issue 1 - March 2018 DOI: 10.19080/JOJPH.2018.03.555605 JOJ Pub Health Copyright © All rights are reserved by Arturo Cervantes Vulnerable Road Users in Mexico: The Perils of Pedestrian Mobility in Developing Countries Arturo Cervantes*, Trejo Liliana, Camarillo Rodríguez and Isaac Castañeda Alcántara Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universidad Anahuac, Mexico Submission: February 17, 2018; Published: March 26, 2018 *Corresponding author: Arturo Cervantes, Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universidad Anahuac, Mexico; Email: Background Road deaths are projected to increase globally, from 1.2 million in 2002 to 2.1 million in 2030, primarily due to increased motor vehicle fatalities associated with economic growth in low-and-middle-income countries (LMIC) [1]. Road traffic injuries (RTI´s) are a major global public health crisis, and are projected to become the fifth leading cause of death in the world by the year 2030 [2-4]. WHO reminds us that almost one half of the 1.2 million fatalities occurring each year in roads concern Vulnerable Road Users (pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists), with children and the elderly being overrepresented among victims [5,6]. In our previous analyses of temporal and geographic trends of mortality from road traffic injuries (RTI´s) in Mexico, our group identified that, in spite of a steady decrease over the 1998 - 2013 period, mortality rates remained high in all Vulnerable Road Users (VRU´s) over the age of 50 years [7]. This previous work evidenced the limitations regarding the grouping of all vulnerable road users into one category, which could obscure differential risk patterns among pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. Within the context of the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety, the main objective is to examine the demographic, temporal and state level patterns of pedestrian road traffic fatalities that occurred from 2000 to 2015 in Mexico, and to provide estimates of fatality rates among sex-age groups, in order to identify those at highest risk [8,9]. Methods This is a population-based retrospective study. We used two sources of public data: official mortality records from 2000- 2015, which provide detailed data on all deaths, classified according to the International Classification of Diseases, and national population projections 2000-2015 at national and state levels [10-12]. We estimated RTI rates and specific pedestrian fatality rate trends for different sex-age groups at national and state levels, by using a logistic regression model [13]. We also compared pedestrian fatality rate trends and overall annual incidence rates at state level, for pedestrians 60 years and older. The models were fitted with the software R version 3.2.3 [14]. To find the regression parameters we used maximum likelihood estimation and for every fit we performed the chi- square goodness of fit test, and checked the significance of each parameter with the t statistic, controlling the level of significance at α= 0.05 [15]. Data Sources Two sources of public data were used in the current project: a) official mortality records of Mexico 2000-2015, which provide detailed data on all deaths, including the cause (classified according to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10)(WHO, 2011), exact time of death, demographic information of the deceased, and b) National population projections 2000-2015 at national and state level. From the mortality database, we selected the records of pedestrian’s casualties, [V02-V04 (.1, .9), V09.2, V09.3, V09.9, (Table 1)](INEGI & CEMECE, 1998) and we obtained the mortality’s counts differentiating by state of occurrence, sex and age groups, which were grouped into 10 categories (0-9, 10-14, 15-19, 20-24, 25-29, 30-39, 40- 49, 50-59, 60-74 and 75 or older). Likewise, we calculated the population’s counts differentiating by state, sex and age groups. By combining both sources of information, we obtained a data set with the number of inhabitants as well as the number of fatalities at national, sub national level, by sex-age group, for each year included in the study. JOJ Pub Health 3(1): JOJPH.MS.ID.555605 (2018) 001 Abbreviations: LMIC: Low-and-Middle-Income Countries; RTI’s: Road Traffic Injuries; VRU’s: Vulnerable Road Users; ICD: International Classification of Diseases