Correlations between traffic, occupational, sports, and home accidents

The aim of this study was to examine the correlations between accidents in traffic, at work, at home, and during sports and leisure time. The study is based on three independent but similar data sets (in 1980 n = 9598, in 1988 n = 13,762, and in 1993 n = 4275) representative of all Finns over 14 years of age. The subjects were asked in a telephone interview to report all accidents in which they had been involved in the previous 12 months. The correlations between different kinds of accidents were low (the highest r = 0.05) although there were many significant correlations. The highest correlations were found between traffic accidents, accidents at work, and sports injuries.