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Erfahrungswerte und Kennzahlen deuten darauf hin, dass Schnee- und Eisglätte in nahezu jedem Winter zu erhöhten Sturzzahlen von Fußgängern und Radfahrern führen. Bisher existieren für Deutschland u. a. aufgrund der hohen Dunkelziffer von Radfahrer-Alleinunfällen und der Nichterfassung von Fußgängerstürzen in der amtlichen Verkehrsunfallstatistik kaum vertiefte Erkenntnisse bezüglich dieser Problematik. Im Rahmen des Forschungsvorhabens konnten mithilfe von Befragungen, Daten von Versicherern und Informationen aus einer früheren Krankenhausstudie der Bundesanstalt für Straßenwesen folgende Erkenntnisse gewonnen werden:
− Der Winterdienst auf Gehwegen wurde von der Hälfte der Befragten, der Winterdienst auf Radwegen dagegen nur von jedem zehnten Befragten als gut eingeschätzt.
− Häufig wurde das Fehlen eines durchgängig winterdienstlich betreuten Hauptroutennetzes für Radfahrer kritisiert.
− Während das Fußgängeraufkommen bei Schnee-/Eisglätte in etwa konstant blieb, ging das Radverkehrsaufkommen in den untersuchten Bereichen um 50 bis 70 % zurück.
− Die Befragungsergebnisse lassen vermuten, dass dieser Rückgang durch verbesserten Winterdienst bestenfalls halbiert werden kann.
− Radfahrer weichen bei ausbleibendem Winterdienst auf Radwegen entgegen der bisherigen Rechtsprechung vornehmlich auf Gehwege aus. Es ist zu prüfen, welche Konsequenzen sich ergeben, falls das Ausweichen der Radfahrer auf die Fahrbahn bei hohen Kfz-Verkehrsstärken/-geschwindigkeiten als unzumutbar angesehen wird.
− Das Risiko für Fußgänger- und Radfahrerstürze steigt bei Schnee-/Eisglätte deutlich. Das Risiko für Fußgängerstürze steigt dabei stärker und liegt bei Schnee-/Eisglätte über dem für Radfahrerstürze. Insgesamt sind die Folgen der Stürze bei Schnee-/Eisglätte jedoch geringer.
− Das Risiko für Stürze von Fußgängern und Radfahrern ist bei Eisglätte deutlich höher als bei Schnee.
− Die hohe Dunkelziffer (über 90 %) von Radfahreralleinunfällen wurde bestätigt.
Im Abschluss des Forschungsvorhabens wurden Handlungsempfehlungen für die Praxis abgeleitet.
Anhand von zwei verschiedenen Versuchskonfigurationen wurde das Schutzpotential von Kopfschutzsystemen (Fahrradhelm und airbagbasiertes System) untersucht. Hierbei wurden die resultierende Kopfbeschleunigung als Messwert sowie das Kopfverletzungskriterium HIC bei Versuchen ohne und mit Kopfschutzsystem vergleichend gegenübergestellt.
Test and assessment procedures for passive pedestrian protection of passenger cars are in place for many years within world-wide regulations as well as consumer test programmes. Nevertheless, recent accident investigations show a stagnation of pedestrian fatality numbers on European roads alongside increasing injury severities for older road users. The EU-funded SENIORS (Safety ENhancing Innovations for Older Road userS) project developed and evaluated a thorax injury prediction tool (TIPT) for later incorporation within test and assessment procedures. Accident data indicates an increasing portion of AIS2 and AIS3+ thoracic injuries of older pedestrians and cyclists which are currently not assessed in any test procedure for vulnerable road users. Therefore, SENIORS focused on the development of a test tool predicting the risk of rib fractures of vulnerable road users (VRU). While injury risk functions were reanalyzed, human body model (HBM) simulations against categorized generic vehicle frontends served as input for the definition of test setups and corresponding impact parameters. TIPT component tests against a generic frontend and an actual vehicle were used for the evaluation of the technical feasibility. The TIPT component tests shows the general feasibility of a test procedure for the assessment of thoracic injuries, with good repeatability and reproducibility of kinematics and results. Impact parameters such as the inclination angles of the thorax, angles of the velocity vector and impact speeds well replicate the parameters gained from the HBM simulations. The proposed markup and assessment scheme offers the possibility of a homogeneous evaluation of the protection potential of vehicle frontends while maintaining justifiable testing efforts. During evaluation testing, the proposed requirements were entirely met. The developed prototype of TIPT and launching system offer impact angles and speeds as suggested by HBM simulations. However, since thorax impacts during pedestrian accidents do not occur perpendicularly to the vehicle surface in most cases, the TIPT built-in linear potentiometers do not acquire the true resultant intrusions on the ribcage and thus, TIPT rib deflections do not reflect the actual human injury risk. However; for the impact forward to the bonnet leading edge, the TIPT seems applicable without further modifications. The test and assessment procedures using the TIPT offer for the first time the possibility of replicating the kinematics of a pedestrian thorax with a component test. The developed assessment scheme gives a first indication on how the risk for thoracic injuries could be implemented within the Euro NCAP Box 3 assessment. Future development of the TIPT may focus on implementing a rib cage that can deflect in all axes in a humanlike way.
A reduction of around 48% of all road fatalities was achieved in Europe in the past years including a reduced number of fatalities with an older age. However, among all road fatalities, the proportion of elderly is steadily increasing. In an ageing society, the European (Horizon2020) project SENIORS aims to improve the safe mobility of older road users, who have different transportation habits compared to other age groups. To increase their level of safe mobility by determining appropriate requirements for vehicle safety systems, the characteristics of current road traffic collisions involving the elderly and the injuries that they sustain need to be understood in detail. Hereby, the paper focuses on their traffic participation as pedestrian, cyclist or passenger car occupant. Following a literature review, several national and international crash databases and hospital statistics have been analysed to determine the body regions most frequently and severely injured, specific injuries sustained and types of crashes involved, always comparing older road users (65 years and more) with mid-aged road users (25-64 years). The most important crash scenarios were highlighted. The data sources included European statistics from CARE, data on national level from Germany, Sweden, Italy, United Kingdom and Spain as well as in-depth crash information from GIDAS (Germany), RAIDS (UK), CIREN and NASS-CDS (US). In addition, familiar hospital data from Germany (TraumaRegister DGU-®), Italy (Italian Register of Acute Traumas) and UK hospital statistics (TARN) were included in the study to gain further insight into specific injury patterns. Comprehensive data analyses were performed showing injury patterns of older road users in crashes. When comparing with mid-aged road users, all databases showed that the thorax body region is of particularly high importance for the older car occupant with injury severities of AIS 2 or AIS 3+, whereas the body regions lower extremities, head and thorax need to be considered for the older pedestrians and cyclists. Besides these comparisons, the most frequent and severe top 5 injuries were highlighted per road user group. Further, the most important crash configurations were identified and injury risk functions are provided per age group and road user group. Although several databases have been analysed, the picture on the road safety situation of older road users in Europe was not complete, as only Western European data was available. The linkage between crash data and hospital data could only be made on a general level as their inclusion criteria were quite different.
Advancing active safety towards the protection of vulnerable road users: the PROSPECT project
(2017)
Accidents involving Vulnerable Road Users (VRU) are still a very significant issue for road safety. According to the World Health Organisation, pedestrian and cyclist deaths account for more than 25% of all road traffic deaths worldwide. Autonomous Emergency Braking Systems have the potential to improve safety for these VRU groups. The PROSPECT project (Proactive Safety for Pedestrians and Cyclists) aims to significantly improve the effectiveness of active VRU safety systems compared to those currently on the market by expanding the scope of scenarios addressed by the systems and improving the overall system performance. The project pursues an integrated approach: Newest available accident data combined with naturalistic observations and HMI guidelines represent key inputs for the system specifications, which form the basis for the system development. For system development, two main aspects are considered: advanced sensor processing with situation analysis, and intervention strategies including braking and steering. All these concepts are implemented in several vehicle prototypes. Special emphasis is put on balancing system performance in critical scenarios and avoiding undesired system activations. For system validation, testing in realistic scenarios will be done. Results will allow the performance assessment of the developed concepts and a cost-benefit analysis. The findings within the PROSPECT project will contribute to the generation of state -of-the-art knowledge, technical innovations, assessment methodologies and tools for advancing Advanced Driver Assistance Systems towards the protection of VRUs. The introduction of a new generation safety system in the market will enhance VRU road safety in 2020-2025, contributing to the "Vision Zero" objective of no fatalities or serious injuries in road traffic set out in the Transport White Paper. Furthermore, the test methodologies and tools developed within the project shall be considered for the New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) future roadmaps, supporting the European Commission goal of halving the road toll in the 2011-2020 timeframe.
Europe has benefited from a decreasing number of road traffic fatalities. However, the proportion of older road users increases steadily. In an ageing society, the SENIORS project aims to improve the safe mobility of older road users by determining appropriate requirements towards passive vehicle safety systems. Therefore, the characteristics of road traffic crashes involving the elderly people need to be understood. This paper focuses on car occupants and pedestrians or cyclists in crashes with modern passenger cars. Ten crash databases and four hospital statistics from Europe have been analysed to answer the questions on which body regions are most frequently and severely injured in the elderly, and specific injuries sustained by always comparing older (65 years and above) with midâ€aged road users (25â€64 years). It was found that the body region thorax is of particularly high importance for the older car occupant with injury severities of AIS2 or AIS3+, where as the lower extremities, head and the thorax need to be considered for older pedestrians and cyclists. Further, injury risk functions were provided. The hospital data analysis showed less difference between the age groups. The linkage between crash and hospital data could only be made on a general level as their inclusion criteria were quite different.
The presence and performance of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) has increased over last years. Systems available on the market address also conflicts with vulnerable road users (VRUs) such as pedestrians and cyclists. Within the European project PROSPECT (Horizon2020, funded by the EC) improved VRU ADAS systems are developed and tested. However, before determining systems" properties and starting testing, an up-to-date analysis of VRU crashes was needed in order to derive the most important Use Cases (detailed crash descriptions) the systems should address. Besides the identified Accident Scenarios (basic crash descriptions), this paper describes in short the method of deriving the Use Cases for car-to-cyclist crashes. Method Crashes involving one passenger car and one cyclist were investigated in several European crash databases looking for all injury severity levels (slight, severe and fatal). These data sources included European statistics from CARE, data on national level from Germany, Sweden and Hungary as well as detailed accident information from these three countries using GIDAS, the Volvo Cars Cyclist Accident database and Hungarian in-depth accident data, respectively. The most frequent accident scenarios were studied and Use Cases were derived considering the key aspects of these crash situations (e.g., view orientation of the cyclist and the car driver- manoeuvre intention) and thus, form an appropriate basis for the development of Test Scenarios. Results Latest information on car-to-cyclist crashes in Europe was compiled including details on the related crash configurations, driving directions, outcome in terms of injury severity, accident location, other environmental aspects and driver responsibilities. The majority of car-to-cyclist crashes occurred during daylight and in clear weather conditions. Car-to-cyclist crashes in which the vehicle was traveling straight and the cyclist is moving in line with the traffic were found to result in the greatest number of fatalities. Considering also slightly and seriously injured cyclists led to a different order of crash patterns according to the three considered European countries. Finally the paper introduced the Use Cases derived from the crash data analysis. A total of 29 Use Cases were derived considering the group of seriously or fatally injured cyclists and 35 Use Cases were derived considering the group of slightly, seriously or fatally injured cyclists. The highest ranked Use Case describes the collision between a car turning to the nearside and a cyclist riding on a bicycle lane against the usual driving direction. A unified European dataset on car-to-cyclist crash scenarios is not available as the data available in CARE is limited, hence national datasets had to be used for the study and further work will be required to extrapolate the results to a European level. Due to the large number of Use Cases, the paper shows only highest ranked ones.
Schutz von schwächeren Verkehrsteilnehmern: kommende Anforderungen aus Gesetzgebung und Euro NCAP
(2017)
Systeme der aktiven Fahrzeugsicherheit, insbesondere Notbremsassistenzsysteme und automatische Notbremssysteme, haben in den letzten zwei Dekaden große technische Fortschritte gemacht, und das im Wesentlichen ohne "Druck" von Gesetzgeber oder unabhängigen Testorganisationen " diese können aber durch passende Anforderungen den Vormarsch der Systeme in die Breite und die Ausnutzung von ansonsten für den Hersteller vielleicht nicht wirtschaftlichen Potentialen unterstützen. Dieser Bericht hat das Ziel, einen Überblick über die kommenden Anforderungen an Schutzsysteme für schwächere Verkehrsteilnehmer zu geben und diese Anforderungen in den Kontext Euro NCAP (=welchen Einfluss haben diese Anforderungen auf die Gesamtbewertung?) sowie Gesetzgebung (schwächere Anforderungen, aber dafür ein Markteintrittskriterium) zu stellen: - Anforderungen und Testprozeduren für Notbremsassistenz Fahrradunfälle 2018 und 2020 in Euro NCAP; - Anforderungen und Testprozeduren für Notbremsassistenz bei Nachtunfällen mit Fußgängern in Euro NCAP 2018; - Anforderungen und Testprozeduren für Abbiegeassistenzsysteme zum Schutz von Radfahrern in Unfallsituationen mit rechtsabbiegenden Lkw innerhalb der Fahrzeugtypgenehmigung.
Accidents between right turning trucks and straight driving cyclists often show massive consequences. Accident severity in terms of seriously or fatally injured cyclists that are involved is much higher than in accidents of other traffic participants in other situations. It seems clear that adding additional mirrors will very likely not improve the situation. At ESV 2015, a methodology to derive test procedures and first test cases as well as requirements for a driver assist system to address blind spot accidents has been presented. However, it was unclear if and how testing of these cases is feasible, to what extent characteristics of different truck concepts (e.g. articulated vehicles, rigid vehicles) influence the test conduction and outcome, and what tolerances should be selected for the different variables. This work is important for the acceptance of a draft regulation in the UN working group on general safety. In the meantime, three test series using a single tractor vehicle, a tractor-semitrailer combination and a rigid vehicle have been conducted. The test tools (e.g. surrogate devices) have been refined. A fully crashable, commercially available bicycle dummy has been tested. If used correct, this dummy does follow a straight line quite precisely and it does not cause any damage to the truck under test in case of accidental impact. The dummy specifications are freely available. During testing, the different vehicle categories resulted in different trajectories being driven. Articulated vehicle combinations did first execute a turn into the opposite direction, and on the other hand, single tractor vehicles did behave comparable to passenger cars. A possible solution to take these behaviors into account is to require the vehicles to drive through a corridor that is narrow for a precise straight-driving phase and extends during the turn. Other investigated parameters are the dummy and vehicle speed tolerances. The results from this research make it possible to draft a regulation for a driver assistance system that helps to avoid blind spot accidents: test cases have been refined, their feasibility has been checked, and corridors for the vehicles and for important parameters (e.g. test speeds) have been set. The test procedure is applicable to all types of heavy goods vehicles. In combination with the accidentology (ESV 2015 paper), the work provides the basis for a regulation for such an assistance system.
Cyclists are more likely to be injured in fatal crashes than motorised vehicles. To gain detailed and precise behavioural data of road users, i.e. trajectories, a measuring campaign was conducted. Therefore, a black-spot for accidents with cyclists in Berlin, Germany was selected. The traffic has been detected by a fully automated traffic video analysis system continuously for twelve hours. The video surveillance system is capable of automatically extracting trajectories, classifying road user types and precise determining and positioning of conflicts and accidents. Additionally, pre-conflict and pre-accident situations could be analysed to provide further in-depth understanding of accident causation. The evaluation of the measuring campaign comprised the investigation of traffic parameters, e.g. traffic flow, as well as traffic-safety related parameters based on Surrogate Safety Measures (SSM). Furthermore, the spatial and temporal distributions of conflicts involving cyclists were determined. As a result, three possible conflict clusters could be identified, of which one cluster could be confirmed by detailed video analysis, showing conflicts caused by right turning vehicles.