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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.
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.
One main objective of the EU-Project SENIORS is to provide improved methods to assess thoracic injury risk to elderly occupants. In contribution to this task paired simulations with a THOR dummy model and human body model will be used to develop improved thoracic injury risk functions. The simulation results can provide data for injury criteria development in chest loading conditions that are underrepresented in PMHS test data sets that currently proposed risk functions are based on. To support this approach a new simplified generic but representative sled test fixture and CAE model for testing and simulation were developed. The parameter definition and evaluation of this sled test fixture and model is presented in this paper. The justification and definition of requirements for this test set-up was based on experience from earlier studies. Simple test fixtures like the gold standard sled fixture are easy to build and also to model in CAE, but provide too severe belt-only loading. On the other hand a vehicle buck including production components like airbag and seat is more representative, but difficult to model and to be replicated at a different laboratory. Furthermore some components might not be available for physical tests at later stage. The basis of the SENIORS generic sled test set-up is the gold standard fixture with a cable seat back and foot rest. No knee restraint was used. The seat pan design was modified including a seat ramp. The three-point belt system had a generic adjustable load limiter. A pre-inflated driver airbag assembly was developed for the test fixture. Results of THOR test and simulations in different configurations will be presented. The configurations include different deceleration pulses. Further parameter variations are related to the restraint system including belt geometry and load limiter levels. Additionally different settings of the generic airbag were evaluated. The test set-up was evaluated and optimized in tests with the THOR-M dummy in different test configurations. Belt restraint parameters like D-ring position and load limiter setting were modified to provide moderate chest loading to the occupant. This resulted in dummy readings more representative of the loading in a contemporary vehicle than most available PMHS sled tests reported in the literature. However, to achieve a loading configuration that exposes the occupant to even less severe loading comparable to modern vehicle restraints it might be necessary to further modify the test set-up. The new generic sled test set-up and a corresponding CAE model were developed and applied in tests and simulations with THOR. Within the SENIORS project with this test set-up also volunteer and PMHS as well as HBM simulations are performed, which will be reported in other publications. The test environment can contribute in future studies to the assessment of existing and new frontal impact dummies as well as dummy improvements and related instrumentation. The test set-up and model could also serve as a new standard test environment for PMHS and volunteer tests as well as HBM simulations.
The incidence of side impacts was investigated from GIDAS data. Both vehicle-fixed object and vehicle-vehicle collisions were analysed as these are enclosed within the consumer testing program. Vehicle-fixed object collisions were stratified according to ESC availability. Results indicated that vehicles equipped with ESC rarely have pure-lateral impacts. An increase in oblique collisions was seen for the vehicles with ESC whereby most vehicle were driving in left curves. The analysis of vehicle-vehicle collisions developed injury risk curves were developed at the AIS3+ injury severity for the vehicle-vehicle side impacts. Results suggested that greatest injury risk occurred when a Pre Euro NCAP vehicle was struck by a Post Euro-NCAP vehicle. The remaining curves did not show different behaviour, indicating that stiffness increased have been equally combated. This was attributable to the few Post Euro-NCAP vehicles that had a deployed curtain airbag available in the sample. The integration of Euro NCAP testing has shown to improve vehicle crashworthiness for pole collisions, as those vehicles with ESC rarely incur lateral impacts.
Car occupants have a high level of mortality in road accidents, since passenger cars are the prevalent mode of transport. In 2013, car occupant fatalities accounted for 45% of all road accident fatalities in the EU. The objective of this research is the analysis of basic road safety parameters related to car occupants in the European countries over a period of 10 years (2004-2013), through the exploitation of the EU CARE database with disaggregate data on road accidents. Data from the EU Injury Database for the period 2005 - 2008 are used to identify injury patterns, and additional insight into accident causation for car occupants is offered through the use of in-depth accident data from the EC SafetyNet project Accident Causation System (SNACS). The results of the analysis allow for a better understanding of the car occupants' safety situation in Europe, thus providing useful support to decision makers working for the improvement of road safety level in Europe.
In this study, we compared the injury severity of occupants according to the seating position and the crashing direction in motor vehicle accidents. In the driver's point of view, it was separated the seating position as "Near-side" and "Far-side". The study subjects were targeted by people who visited 4 regional emergency centers following motor vehicle accidents. Real-world investigation was performed by direct and indirect methods after patient- consent. The information of the damaged vehicle was informed by Collision Deformation Classification (CDC) code and the information of the injury of patients was informed by using the Abbreviated Injury Score (AIS) and Injury Severity Score (ISS). When the column 3 in CDC code was P, damaged at the middle part of lateral side, the average point of AIS 3 was 1.91-±1.72 in near-side and 1.02-±1.31 in far-side (p<0.01). The average point of maximum AIS (MAIS) was 2.78-±1.39 in near-side and 2.02-±1.11 in far-side (p<0.01). The average point of ISS was 15.74-±14.71 in near-side and 8.11-±8.39 in far-side (p<0.01). Also, when the column 3 in CDC code was D, damaged at the whole part of lateral side, it was significant that the average point of AIS 3 and MAIS in near-side was bigger than in far-side (p=0.02).
In most of developed countries, the progress made in passive safety during the last three decades allowed to drastically reduce the number of killed and severely injured especially for occupants of passenger cars. This reduction is mainly observed for frontal impacts for which the AIS3+ injuries has been reduced about 52% for drivers and 38% for front passengers. The stiffening of the cars' structure coupled with the generalization of airbags and the improvement of the seatbelt restraint (load limiter, pretension, etc.) allowed to protect vital body regions such as head, neck and thorax. However, the abdomen did not take advantage with so much success of this progress. The objective of this study is to draw up an inventory on the abdominal injuries of the belted car occupants involved in frontal impact, to present adapted counter-measures and to assess their potential effectiveness. In the first part the stakes corresponding to the abdominal injuries will be defined according to types of impact, seat location, occupants' age and type of injured organs. Then, we shall focus on the abdominal injury risk curves for adults involved in frontal impact and on the comparisons of the average risks according to the seat location. In the second part we will list counter-measures and we shall calculate their effectiveness. The method of case control will be used in order to estimate odds ratio, comparing two samples, given by occupants having or not having the studied safety system. For this study, two type of data sources are used: national road injured accident census and retrospective in-depth accident data collection. Abdominal injuries are mainly observed in frontal impact (52%). Fatal or severe abdominal occupant- injuries are observed at least in 27% of cases, ranking this body region as the most injured just after the thorax (51%). In spite of a twice lower occupation rate in the back seats compared to the front seats, the number of persons sustaining abdominal injuries at the rear place is higher than in the front place. In recent cars, the risk of having a serious or fatal abdominal injury in a frontal impact is 1.6% for the driver, 3.6% for the front passenger and 6.3% for the rear occupants. The most frequently hurt organs are the small intestine (17%), the spleen (16%) and the liver (13%). The most common countermeasures have a good efficiency in the reduction of the abdominal injuries for the adults: the stiffness of the structure of the seats allows decreasing the abdominal injury risk from 54% (driver) to 60% (front occupant), the seatbelt pretensioners decrease also this risk from 90% (driver) to 83% (front passenger).
From an automotive safety occupant protection standpoint, effective occupant restraint requires a system capable of providing non-injurious occupant ride down of anticipated crash forces. This is not only the case for frontal collisions, where occupant restraint is provided primarily by seatbelts and airbags, but is also critical for other crash modes such as side impacts, rear impacts, rollovers, as well as multiple impact events. In the rear impact crash mode, occupant restraint is provided primarily by the seatbacks and to some extent the seatbelts. Foundationally, therefore, what becomes fundamental to the seatback's role in rear occupant protection is its ability to contain the occupant within the seat, preventing occupant ramping, as well as preventing the seat's, and/or its occupant's, dangerous intrusion into the rear occupant's survival space where contact with rear compartment components and/ or rear seated occupants can present a significant injury risk. An analysis is presented of a series of rear impact sled testing conducted by the authors that evaluates the timing, position and extent of the front seatback's reward displacement toward and into the rear occupant compartment as well as consideration of the front seat occupant' ramping potential and its injury potential relative to the rear compartment. Additionally, three other series of testing are presented which assess various seat designs occupant retention capabilities. Lastly, a matched-pair comparison test series is presented which evaluates occupant motion in rear impact with and without use of a typical vehicle body mounted 3-point seatbelt. Discussion of restraint system performance observed in all the testing is included along with ATD biofidelity and thigh-gap considerations. The data collected and presented includes accelerometer instrumentation and high speed video analysis.
Detailed anthropometric data of pregnant women have been collected and used in the development of a computational model of the pregnant occupant model "Expecting". The model is complete with a finite element uterus and multi-body fetus, which is a novel feature in the models of this kind. The computational pregnant occupant model has been validated and used to simulate a range of impacts. The strains developed in the utero-placental interface are used as the main criteria for fetus safety. Stress distributions due to inertial loading of the fetus on the utero-placental interface play a role on the strain levels. Inclusion of fetus model is shown to significantly affect the strain levels in the utero-placental interface. This series of studies has led to the design of seatbelt features specifically for the pregnant women to enable them use the seatbelt correctly and comfortably.
Past European collaborative research involving government bodies, vehicle manufacturers and test laboratories has resulted in a prototype barrier face called the Advanced European Mobile Deformable Barrier (AE-MDB) for use in a new side impact test procedure . This procedure offers a better representation of the current accident situation and, in particular, the barrier concept is a better reflection of front-end stiffness seen in today- passenger car fleet compared to that of the current legislative barrier face. Based on the preliminary performance corridors of the prototype AE-MDB, a refined AE-MDB specification has been developed. A programme of barrier to load cell wall testing was undertaken to complete and standardise the AE-MDB specification. Barrier faces were supplied by the four leading manufacturers to demonstrate that the specification could be met by all. This paper includes background, specification and proof of compliance.
The main objective of EC CASPER research project is to reduce fatalities and injuries of children travelling in cars. Accidents involving children were investigated, modelling of human being and tools for dummies were advanced, a survey for the diagnosis of child safety was carried out and demands and applications were analysed. From the many research tasks of the CASPER project, the intention of this paper is to address the following: • In-depth investigation of accidents and accident reconstruction. These will provide important points for the injury risk curve, in order to improve it. Different accident investigation teams collected data from real road accidents, involving child car passengers, in five different European countries. Then, a selection of the most appropriate cases for the injury risk curve and the purposes of the project was made for an in-depth analysis. The final stage of this analysis was to conduct an accident reconstruction to validate the results obtained. The in-depth analysis included on-scene accident investigation, creating virtual simulations of the accident/possible reconstruction, and conducting the reconstruction. In the cases of successful reconstructions, new points were introduced to the injury risk curves. Accident reconstructions of selected cases were carried out in test laboratories as the next step following in-depth road accident investigation. These cases were reconstructed using similar child restraint systems (CRS) and the same type make and model as in the real accidents. Reconstructing real cases has several limitations, such as crash angle, cars" approximation paths and crash speed. However, a few changes and applications on the testing conditions were applied to reduce the limitations and improved the representations of the real accidents. After conducting the reconstructions, a comparison between the deformations of the cars on the real accident and the vehicles from the reconstructions was made. Additionally, a correlation between the data captured from the dummies and the injury data from the real accident was sought. This finalises an in-depth analysis of the accident, which will provide new relevant points to the injury risk curve. The CASPER project conducted a large research programme on child safety. On technical points, a promising research area is the developing injury risk curves as a result of in-depth accident investigations and reconstructions. This abstract was written whilst the project was not yet finished and final results are not yet known, but they will be available by the time of the conference. All the works and findings will not necessarily be integrated in the industrial versions of evaluation tools as the CASPER project is a research program.
The European CASPER (Child Advanced Safety Project for European Roads) project studying car child safety includes a sociological approach in order to have a better understanding of the behaviour of parents driving children under 12 years old. A questionnaire was distributed via the internet in Europe with 998 parents (representing 1638 children) from 22 European countries responding. The results inform on the way parents secure their children during a car trip. Many parents did not control how their children were installed in the child restraint system (CRS). A toddler was more likely to travel into a child seat than an older child was. Regarding misuse situations, an important part of the participants did not think that they could make mistakes when fixing the child seat to the car (26%) or when placing the child into the seat (39%). This leaves an important field of action especially by communication via different media and in the CRS sale outlets.
Introduction: Spine injuries pose a considerable risk to life and quality of life. The total number of road deaths in developed countries has markedly decreased, e.g. in Germany from over 20000 in 1970 to less than 4000 in 2010, but little is known how this is reflected in the burden of spine fractures of motor vehicle users. In this study, we aimed to show the actual incidence of spine injuries among drivers and front passengers and elucidate possible dependencies between crash mechanisms and types of injuries.
The misuse of CRS (child restraint system) is one of the most urgent problems in connection of child safety in cars. Numerous field studies show that more than two thirds of all CRS are used in a wrong way. This misuse could lead to serious injuries for the children. Surprisingly the quality of CRS use is coded much better in accident data (e.g. GIDAS) than the results of observatory field studies show. It is expected that misuse of CRS was not detected by the accident teams in a large number of the cases. An essential part in improving child seats and their usability is the knowledge of the relation between misuse and resulting injuries. For that the analysis and experimental reconstruction of accidents is an important part. For allowing an exact experimental accident reconstruction, it is necessary to have detailed information about the securing situation of the child and about the installation of the CRS in the car.
Every second counts when human lives are at stake. The increasingly safe design of vehicles presents rescuers with a serious challenge. Faced with high-strength steels and body reinforcements, even the most powerful cutters reach their limits. Therefore, incident commanders require information on the technical features and components installed, directly in the vehicle. Several tests have shown that such information helps to save valuable minutes. Therefore, a standardised A4 "rescue sheet" containing information on the location of cabin reinforcements, the tank, the battery, airbags, gas generators, control units etc. " and indicating adequate cutting points must be used throughout Europe. Hopefully, in a few years, the new eCall emergency call system will be in place everywhere in Europe. The system will transmit the relevant vehicle-specific data directly to the rescuers on-site. Until then, we need a simple and effective solution that saves lives.
A total survey of road traffic accidents involving most severely injured, defined as sustaining a polytrauma or severe monotrauma (ISS > 15) or being killed, was conducted over 14 months in a large study region in Germany. Data on injuries, pre-clinical and clinical care, crash circumstances and vehicle damage were obtained both prospectively and retrospectively from trauma centers, dispatch centers, police and fire departments. 149 patients with a polytrauma and eight with a severe monotrauma were recorded altogether. 22 patients died in hospital. Another 76 victims had deceased at the accident scene. In 2008, 49 % of patients treated with life-threatening injuries were car or van occupants, 21 % motorcyclists, 18 % cyclists and 10 % pedestrians. Among fatalities at the scene, vehicle occupants constituted an even larger portion. The number of road users with life-threatening trauma in the region was extrapolated to the German situation. It suggests that 10 % among the "seriously injured" as defined in national accident statistics are surviving accident victims with a polytrauma or severe monotrauma.
Providing effective occupant protection in rollover crashes requires supplying the occupant with a restraint system proven effective in the dynamic rollover accident mode. Preventing ejection and providing restraint sufficient to prevent potentially injurious contacts with both interior and exterior vehicle components is paramount for effective rollover occupant protection. Research has shown that the injury potential can be decreased by closely coupling the occupant to the seat. This paper focuses on the effect of restraint system slack and its relationship to occupant excursion and ejection potential during rollover. Various restraint system configurations are evaluated in rollover-type test environments. A review of prior research is presented prior to presenting new quasi-static vehicle inversion studies conducted with live surrogate occupants. Additionally, dynamic rollover testing utilizing anthropometric test devices (ATDs) is presented. The influence of belt looseness and effects of various restraint designs on the belted occupants' injury potential are discussed.
Empirical vehicle crashworthiness studies are usually based on national or in-depth traffic accident surveys: Data on accident-involved cars/drivers are analysed in order to quantify the chance of driver injury and to assess certain risk factors like car make and model. As the cars/drivers involved in the same accident form a "cluster", where the size of the cluster equals the number of accident-involved parties, traffic accident survey data are typical multi-level data with accidents as first-level or primary and cars/drivers as secondlevel or secondary units (car occupants in general are to be considered as third level units). Consequently, appropriate statistical multi-level models are to be used for driver injury risk estimation purposes as these models properly account for the cluster structure of traffic accident survey data. In recent years various types of regression models for clustered data have been developed in the statistical sciences. This paper presents multi-level statistical models, which are generally applicable for vehicle crashworthiness assessment in the sense that data on single and multiple car crashes can be analysed simultaneously. As a special case of multi-level modelling driver injury risk estimation based on paired-by-collision car/driver data is considered. It is demonstrated that assessment results may be seriously biased, if the cluster structure inherent in traffic accident survey data is erroneously ignored in the data analysis stage.
The number of injuries sustained by car occupants involving the head, thorax, spine, pelvis and the upper limbs have been reduced significantly during recent years. This is probably due to better safety features in the cars, especially the availability and usage of safety belts, airbags etc. Therefore one can notice clinically a relative increase in survivors of severe frontal crashes, but many of them have injuries to the lower extremities. To verify this, we analyzed the foot and ankle injuries of front seat passengers.
Sedan type vehicles in which adult rear seat passengers were present and which were involved in frontal collisions were investigated, and the influence of unbelted rear seat passengers on the injuries of front seat occupants was studied. Unbelted rear seat passengers move forward during impact. It was observed that there were not only cases in which front seat occupants sustained injuries caused by direct contact with rear seat passengers, but also cases where front seat occupants received severe injuries due to additional force from rear seat passengers, either impacting directly or indirectly as a result of deformation of the front seat. Severe injuries of front seat occupants were observed in the latter cases. This research validates the importance of seat-belt use for rear seat passengers, not only to protect themselves but also to mitigate injuries of front seat occupants.
In-depth road traffic accident research in Spain is a fairly recent activity. In the past, only accident data that had been retrospectively processed by the national and regional traffic police forces was available. In 1999 Applus+IDIADA set up a permanent accident research unit to carry out indepth analysis of road accidents in Spain. Since then accidents involving cars, motorcycles, coaches and vulnerable road users have been thoroughly studied. The Applus+IDIADA accident research team has carried out work for the various traffic polices in Spain and it is currently involved in several research projects in which accidentology is one of the main tasks. The working methodology of the team is presented in the first part of the paper. In the framework of the European research project "Rollover" (GRD2-2001-50086), Applus+IDIADA has collected data, inspected scenarios and performed virtual reconstructions of twenty-six of the total seventy-six rollover accidents studied. The second half of the paper describes how these accident investigations were used to develop a test procedure for identifying possible improvements to the vehicle structure which augment occupant protection in a rollover scenario. In particular, a proposal for a new drop test for rollover assessment is presented. The cases were analysed for severity, in terms of injury to the occupants and damage to the vehicle, and taking into account whether a seatbelt was worn or not. The worst possible cases were identified as those that had severe occupant injuries and sizable damage to the occupant compartment when seatbelts had been worn. The most severe cases were then analysed further for impact position (roll and pitch angles) and the impact velocity. With these parameters taken into account, the most representative combinations could be found. This resulted in a series of configurations for possible drop tests. The results of the tests indicate where passenger vehicle structures need to be improved in order to increase occupant safety in the event of a rollover crash.
The improvement of passive car security devices led to a reduction of injuries, especially of the head, the neck and the torso mainly due to the airbag function. The passenger's foot and ankle could not profit from this development. Some investigators even reported a progression of leg injuries (1). In this study, we investigated a current collective of patients with foot and ankle fractures or severe soft tissue injuries in relation with defined crash parameters. Special interest was paid to the car's footwell.