Consumption of alcohol and tranquilizers reaches a very high level in France. Studies about simultaneous alcohol and psychotropic drugs involvement in motor related fatalities have never been described in this country. A retrospective study was done on 482 fatalities broken down by drivers and pedestrians within one year (1987) in Région Nord-Pas de Calais (France).
Method: 132 cases met the criteria for complete study. Blood samples obtained at the time of death were analysed for alcohol (BAC) by gas-chromatography and assayed for barbiturates (BA), benzodiazepines (BE) and tricyclic antidepressants (TA) by Emit.
Results: Out of 132 fatalities there were 86% men (mean age 38.5 years) and 14% women (mean age 46 years). 57% belonged to the working population. Of the fatalities, 38% occurred from Friday 8 p.m. to Sunday 12 p.m. We distinguished 3 categories: pedestrians (18.2%), 2-wheel vehicles (19%) and 4-wheel vehicles (62.8%). Alcohol involvement is given in Table 2. [table: see text] Notice that 53% were above the legal limit (0.8 g/l) and 34.8% had no alcohol. Psychotropic drugs were detected in 10.6% of the cases (Table 3). [table: see text] BZ were found in 50% of men and 100% of women. drugs and alcohol were present simultaneously in 8.3% of the individuals. Results are in % of total in Table 4: [table: see text] Positive BAC and positive drugs are not related. No significant difference was found in the distribution of alcohol between positive or negative drugs findings. Our results are consistent with those described by North-American authors, but largely superior to those from French or other studies done only on injured persons.