Car crash threat to unborn babies

The statistic has prompted calls for extra research into improving car safety for pregnant women.

The majority of pregnant women continue driving for some months after becoming pregnant, and most will continue to travel as passengers.

However, car crashes are the leading cause of hospitalisation during pregnancy - and can put the foetus at great risk.

A team of researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, US, looked at the records of car crashes involving 15 to 39-year-old women.

They found that, even though the number of pregnancies was likely to be undercounted, at least 1% of all births involved women who had reported a car crash while pregnant.

Pregnant women were less likely to fare worse as a result of a crash than non-pregnant women - mainly because they tended to be rushed off to hospital with greater priority.

Future fear

However, the researchers said it was hard to determine exactly what effect, if any, the crashes have on the development of the foetus and the resulting baby.

They wrote: "Unlike many other important environmental threats, it is not well known how or to what extent trauma exposures contribute to adverse developmental outcome.

"There is need to better track pregnancy related crashes.

"We need to better understand how to protect pregnant women from being in a crash and if in a crash, how to better protect them."

Experts say that the risks from wearing seatbelts are greatly outweighed by those from not wearing them during pregnancy.

Precautions

A spokesman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said: "All pregnant women must wear seat belts by law when travelling in cars.

"This applies to both front and back seats and pregnancy does not in itself provide exemption from the law.

"Medical research has shown that the safest way to wear a seat belt is to place the shoulder strap between the breasts (over the breastbone) and the lap belt flat on the thighs, fitting comfortably beneath the enlarged abdomen.

"In this way the forces applied in a sudden impact can be absorbed by the body's frame."

He added: "It is not advisable to wear 'Lap-Only-Belts' as they have been shown to cause grave injuries to unborn children in the event of sudden deceleration."

The research was published in the journal Injury Prevention.