Still correlated with high mortality rates in traffic accidents traumatic aortic ruptures were frequently detected in unprotected car occupants in the early years. This biomechanical analysis investigates the different kinds of injury mechanisms leading to traumatic aortic injuries in todays traffic accidents and how the way of traffic participation affects the frequency of those injuries over the years. Based on GIDAS reported traffic accidents from 1973 to 2014 are analyzed. Results show that traumatic aortic injuries are mainly observed in high-speed accidents with high body deceleration and direct load force to the chest. Mostly chest compression is responsible for the load direction to the cardiac vessels. The main observed load vector is from caudal-ventral and from ventral solely, but also force impact from left and right side and in roll-over events with chest compression lead to traumatic aortic injuries. Classically, the injury appeares at the junction between the well-fixed aortic arch and the pars decendens following a kind of a scoop mechanism, a few cases with a hyperflexion mechanism are also described. In our analysis the deceleration effect alone never led to an aortic rupture. Comparing the past 40 years aortic injuries shift from unprotected car occupants to today's unprotected vulnerable road users like pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. Still the accident characteristics are linked with chest compression force under high speed impact, no seatbelt and direct body impact.
To elucidate the risk of pedestrians, bicycle and motorbike users, data of two accident research units from 1999 to 2014 were analysed in regard to demographic data, collision details, preclinical and clinical data using SPSS. 14.295 injured vulnerable road users were included. 92 out of 3610 pedestrians ("P", 2.5%), 90 out of 8307 bicyclists ("B", 1.1%) and 115 out of 4094 motorcycle users ("M", 2.8%) were diagnosed with spinal fractures. Thoracic fractures were most frequent ahead of lumbar and cervical fractures. Car collisions were most frequent mechanism (68, 62 and 36%). MAIS was 3.8, 2.8 and 3.2 for P, B and A with ISS 32, 16 and 23. AIS-head was 2.2, 1.3 and 1.5). Vulnerable road users are at significant risk for spine fractures. These are often associated with severe additional injuries, e.g. the head and a very high overall trauma severity (polytrauma).
While cyclists and pedestrians are known to be at significant risk for severe injuries when exposed to road traffic accidents (RTAs) involving trucks, little is known about RTA injury risk for truck drivers. The objective of this study is to analyze the injury severity in truck drivers following RTAs. Between 1999 and 2008 the Hannover Medical School Accident Research Unit prospectively documented 43,000 RTAs involving 582 trucks. Injury severity including the abbreviated injury scale (AIS) and the maximum abbreviated injury scale (MAIS) were analyzed. Technical parameters (e.g. delta-v, direction of impact), the location of accident, and its dependency on the road type were also taken into consideration. The results show that the safety of truck drivers is assured by their vehicles, the consequence being that the risk of becoming injured is likely to be low. However, the legs especially are at high risk for severe injuries during RTAs. This probability increases in the instance of a collision with another truck. Nevertheless, in RTAs involving trucks and regular passenger vehicles, the other party is in higher risk of injury.
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).
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.
Recently, EuroNCAP updated the upper legform test protocols. The main objective of this study is to establish the upper legform test in KIDAS (Korean In-depth Accident Study) taking into account domestic pedestrian accident data as well as anthropometric data to protect elderly pedestrians whose average height and weight is much smaller and lighter than other age groups, especially compared to Europeans. Therefore 230 cases of pedestrian accidents from KIDAS were investigated to explore the injury severity of body regions as well as age related injury patterns. Injuries of all body regions were examined, with a special focus on injuries of abdomen and pelvic area. On the other hand, in order to explore Korea's pedestrian accident environment, national police data and KIDAS (Korean In-depth Accident Study) data were compared. The results should be taken into account in future analyses and possible improvements, such as regulations and KNCAP test protocols, of the pedestrian safety policy in Korea.
Interdisciplinary accident research and research projects of AARU Audi Accident Research Unit
(2017)
AARU (Audi Accident Research Unit) is an interdisciplinary research project of the University Hospital Regensburg in cooperation with AUDI AG. Specific objective is to comprehend the respective accident scenario and retrieve generally applicable findings as to technical, medical and psychological processes. In order to prevent traffic accidents and to alleviate vehicle accident consequences, postulates of general traffic safety, human-machine interaction, technical design and function of new vehicles and occupant as well as third party protection shall be inferred from these findings. Specifically, each accident with new Audi, Lamborghini and Ducati vehicles involved is analyzed interdisciplinary, discussed in a case meeting and anonymously documented with more than 2,000 parameters. The database is continually used for solving safety relevant issues. Parallel to accident analysis, research projects are performed in the fields medicine, psychology and engineering in order to gain comprehensive insight and identify potential additional areas of activity of accident research.
In 2016 the seventh ESAR conference (Expert Symposium on Accident Research) was held in Hannover. ESAR is an international convention of experts, who analyze traffic accidents all over the world and discuss their results in this context, conducted at the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover every 2 years. It connected representatives of public authorities, engineers in automotive development and scientists and offers a forum with particular emphasis on In-Depth-Analyses of accident statistics and accident analyses. Special focus is placed on research on the basis of so-called "In-Depth-Accident-Investigations" [data collections at the sites of the accidents], which are characterized by extensive documentations of the sites of the accidents, of the vehicles as well as of the injuries, encompassing several scientific fields. ESAR aims at a multi-disciplinary compilation of scientific results and at discussing them on an international, scientific level. It is thus a scientific colloquium and a platform for exchanging information for all accident researchers. Experiences in accident prevention as well as in the complex field of accident reconstruction are stated and new research fields are added. Existing results of long-term research work in Europe, the US, Australia and Japan include different infrastructural correlations and give findings on population, vehicle population and driver characteristics, which offer a basis for recommendations to be derived and measures for increasing road safety.