Um die Entwicklung von Fahrzeugen mit alternativem Antrieb in Deutschland beurteilen zu können, initiierte die Bundesanstalt für Straßenwesen (BASt) im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums für Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur (BMVI) schon im Jahr 2010 die Einrichtung einer langfristigen Beobachtung des Fahrzeugmarktes und des Unfallgeschehens von Fahrzeugen mit alternativen Antriebsarten mit dem Ziel, die tatsächliche Umsetzung des technologischen Fortschritts in marktgängige Produkte zu verfolgen, frühzeitig Kenntnis über die Bestandsentwicklung zu erhalten sowie mögliche Fehlentwicklungen – insbesondere mit Blick auf die Verkehrssicherheit – zu identifizieren. Vor allem die Betrachtung des letzten Punktes soll die Möglichkeit schaffen, Vorschläge für eine sinnvolle Steuerung der Entwicklung leisten zu können. Der Bestand an Pkw mit alternativem Antrieb stieg von rund 900.000 Fahrzeugen im Jahr 2019 auf rund 1,74 Millionen Pkw im Jahr 2021 (ein Plus von 91 %). Die größte Gruppe stellen Hybridfahrzeuge mit mehr als 1.1 Millionen Pkw, dessen Bestand sich seit 2019 fast verdreifacht hat. Die Entwicklung des Plug-In-Hybrid-Bestandes ist noch deutlicher: im Zeitraum von 2019 bis 2021 stieg der Wert auf das 4-fache. Bei reinen Elektro-Pkw stieg der Bestand auf 300.083 Fahrzeuge im Jahre 2021. Lediglich der Bestand von Pkw, die mit Erdgas (CNG) oder Flüssiggas (LPG) fahren, ist rückläufig. In 2021 stellen sie nur noch 25 % aller Pkw mit alternativem Antrieb. Der bisherige Trend setzt sich bei allen alternativen Antriebsarten auch im Jahr 2022 fort. der Bestand von Pkw mit alternativem Antrieb lag im Jahr 2022 schon bei 2,70 Millionen Fahrzeugen. Im Januar 2022 wurden bereits 618.460 Pkw mit reinem Elektroantrieb registriert; eine Verdopplung gegenüber 2021.
Aufgabe der Studie war es, die Ausstattung der Pkw in Deutschland mit Fahrzeugsicherheitssystemen umfassend zu erheben. Ab 2013 hat infas die Studie in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Institut für Kraftfahrzeuge (ika) regelmäßig im zweijährigen Abstand durchgeführt, um Veränderungen bei der Marktdurchdringung der Systeme festzustellen. 2021 wurden dazu 5.006 Haushalte zur Ausstattung eines ihnen zur Verfügung stehenden Fahrzeugs befragt.
Für die Befragung wurden insgesamt 61 Fahrzeugsicherheitssysteme ausgewählt. Die weiteste Verbreitung haben weiterhin passive Sicherheitssysteme wie Airbags. Sowohl Front als auch Seitenairbags gehören zur Standardausstattung in allen Fahrzeugsegmenten. Gleiches gilt mittlerweile auch für Seat Belt Reminder und Gurtstraffer. Neuere passive Systeme, insbesondere zum Fußgängerschutz, sind dagegen überwiegend in neueren Modellen der oberen Mittel und Oberklasse vorhanden. Zur Fahrzeugausstattung gehören gleichzeitig aktive Systeme, die Risiken vermeiden oder auch einzelne Fahraufgaben übernehmen. Die häufigsten Vertreter aus dieser Gruppe sind Bremsassistent, ESP und Tempomat. Bereits 90 Prozent der Fahrzeuge sind mit ESP ausgestattet, das seit 2011 gesetzlich vorgeschrieben ist. Auch die Tagfahrleuchte ist aufgrund einer EURichtlinie bereits in 61 Prozent aller Fahrzeuge verbaut und wird in Zukunft eine volle Marktdurchdringung erreichen. Zu den neueren Entwicklungen gehören teilautomatisierte Systeme, wie der Überhol und Autobahnassistent, die bereits dem Automatisierungslevel 2 der Norm SAE J3016 entsprechen. Diese sind aufgrund der teuren und aufwendigen Technik jedoch bislang nur bei einem kleinen Teil der Geländewagen/SUV sowie der oberen Mittel und Oberklasse zu finden.
In den letzten Jahren nimmt besonders die Ausstattung im Segment SUV stark zu, sodass Fahrzeuge dieses Segments inzwischen bei einigen Systemen besser ausgestattet sind als Fahrzeuge der oberen Mittel und Oberklasse. Dies hängt auch mit der stetig wachsenden Anzahl der Neuzulassungen in diesem Bereich zusammen. Die Anzahl der Sicherheitssysteme nimmt mit der jährlichen Fahrleistung und der Nutzungshäufigkeit ebenso zu wie bei jüngeren Fahrzeugen und Dienstwagen. Betrachtet man die Ausstattungsraten nach Fahrzeugsegmenten zeigt sich ein Muster: Sind Systeme insgesamt selten, unterscheiden sich die Anteile innerhalb der verschiedenen Fahrzeugsegmente teilweise erheblich.
The paper aims to study the injury risk and kinematics of pedestrians involved in different passenger vehicle collisions. Furthermore, the difference of pedestrian kinematics in the accidents involved minivan and sedan was analyzed. The 18 sample cases of passenger car to pedestrian collisions were selected from the database of In-depth Investigation of Vehicle Accident in Changsha of China (IVAC),of which the 12 pedestrian accidents involved in a minivan impact for each case, and the 6 accidents in a sedan impact for each. The selected cases were reconstructed by using mathematical models of pedestrians and accident vehicles in a multi-body dynamic code MADYMO environment. The logistic regression models of the risks for pedestrian AIS 3+ injuries and fatalities were developed in terms of vehicle impact speed by analyzing the minivan-pedestrian and sedan-pedestrian accidents. The difference of pedestrian kinematics was identified by comparing the results from reconstructed pedestrian accidents between the minivans and sedans collisions. The result shows that there is a significant correlation among the impact speed and the severity of pedestrian injuries. The minivan poses greater risk to pedestrian than sedan at the same impact speed. The kinematics of pedestrian was greatly influenced by vehicle front shape.
The utilisation of secondary-safety systems to protect occupants has attained a very high level over the past decades. Further improvements are still possible, but increasingly minor progress is only to be had with a high degree of effort. Thus, a key aspect must be the impact to overall safety in an accident. If reliable information is available on an imminent crash, measures already taken in the pre-crash phase can result in a significantly great influence on the outcomes of the crash. With this background preventive measures are the key to a sustainable further reduction of the figures of crash victims on our roads. This paper aims to show a preventive approach that can contribute to lessening the consequences of a crash by creating an optimum interaction of measures in the fields of primary and secondary safety. To further enhance vehicle safety, driver assistant systems are already available that warn the driver of an imminent front-to-rear-end crash. The next step is to support him in his reactions or if he fails to react sufficiently, to even initiate an automatic braking when the crash becomes unavoidable. Automatic pre-crash braking can, in an ideal situation, fully prevent a crash or can significantly reduce the impact speed and thus the impact energy (and the severity of the accident). If a vehicle is being braked in the pre-crash phase, the occupants are already being pre-stressed by the deceleration. The information available about the imminent crash can be used to activate the belt tensioners and likewise other secondary safety systems in the vehicle right before the impact. The pre-crash deceleration also causes the front of the vehicle to dip. Conventional crash tests do not take this specific impact situation into consideration. This is why, for example, the influences of the pre-crash displacements of the occupants are not recorded in the test results. Furthermore, a reproducible representation of the benefit of the vehicle safety systems which prepare the occupants for the imminent impact is not possible. In order to demonstrate the functions of automated pre-crash braking and to investigate the differences during the impact as a consequence of the altered occupant positions as well as the initiation of force and deformations of the vehicle front, DEKRA teamed up with BMW to carry out a joint crash test with the latest BMW 5 series vehicle. It involved the vehicle braking automatically from a starting test speed of 64 km/h (corresponding to the impact speed set by Euro NCAP) down to 40 km/h. The test was still run by the intelligent drive system of the crash test facility. This required several modifications to be made to the test facility as well as to the vehicle. The paper will describe and discuss some relevant results of the crash test. In addition, the possible benefits of such systems will also be considered. The test supplemented the work of the vFSS working group (vFSS stands advanced Forward-looking Safety Systems).
This study that was funded by the Research Association for Automotive Technology (FAT) develops a method for the evaluation of the placement of tanks or batteries by using the deformation frequencies in real-world accidents. Therefore, the deformations of more than 20.000 passenger cars in the GIDAS database are analysed. For each vehicle a contour of deformation is calculated and the deformed areas of the vehicles are transferred in a rangy matrix of deformation. Thereby, the vehicle is divided into more than 190.000 cells. Afterwards, all single matrices of deformation are summarized for each cell which allows representative analyses of the deformation frequencies of accidents with passenger cars in Germany. On the basis of these deformation frequencies it is possible to determine least deformed areas of all passenger cars. Furthermore, intended placements of tanks or batteries can be estimated in an early stage of development. Therefore, all vehicles with deformations in the intended tank areas can be analysed individually. Considering numerous parameters out of the GIDAS database (e.g. collision speed, kind of accident, overlap, collision partner etc.) the occurring forces can be calculated or the deformation frequency can be estimated. Furthermore, it is possible to consider the influence of primary and secondary safety systems on the deformation behaviour. The analysis of "worst case accident events" is an additional application of the calculated matrix of deformation frequency.
The paper presents a methodology for the benefit estimation of several secondary safety systems for pedestrians, using the exceptional data depth of GIDAS. A total of 667 frontal pedestrian accidents up to 40kph and more than 500 AIS2+ injuries have been considered. In addition to the severity, affected body region, exact impact point on the vehicle, and the causing part of every injury, the related Euro NCAP test zone was determined. One results of the study is a detailed impact distribution for AIS2+ injuries across the vehicle front. It can be stated, how often a test zone or vehicle part is hit by pedestrians in frontal accidents and which role the ground impact plays. Basing on that, different secondary safety measures can be evaluated by an injury shift method concerning their real world effectiveness. As an example, measures concerning the Euro NCAP pedestrian rating tests have been evaluated. It was analysed which Euro NCAP test zones are the most effective ones. In addition, real test results have been evaluated. Using the presented methodology, other secondary safety like the active bonnet (pop-up bonnet) or a pedestrian airbag measures can be evaluated.
Pedestrian and cyclist are the most vulnerable road users in traffic crashes. One important aspect of this study was the comparable analysis of the exact impact configuration and the resulting injury patterns of pedestrians and cyclists in view of epidemiology. The secondary aim was assessment of head injury risks and kinematics of adult pedestrian and cyclists in primary and secondary impacts and to correlate the injuries related to physical parameters like HIC value, 3ms linear acceleration, and discuss the technical parameter with injuries observed in real-world accidents based documented real accidents of GIDAS and explains the head injuries by simulated load and impact conditions based on PC-Crash and MADYMO. A subsample of n=402 pedestrians and n=940 bicyclists from GIDAS database, Germany was used for preselection, from which 22 pedestrian and 18 cyclist accidents were selected for reconstruction by initially using PC-Crash to calculate impact conditions, such as vehicle impact velocity, vehicle kinematic sequence and throw out distance. The impact conditions then were employed to identify the initial conditions in simulation of MADYMO reconstruction. The results show that cyclists always suffer lower injury outcomes for the same accident severity. Differences in HIC, head relative impact velocity, 3ms linear contiguous acceleration, maximum angular velocity and acceleration, contact force, throwing distance and head contact timing are shown. The differences of landing conditions in secondary impacts of pedestrians and cyclists are also identified. Injury risk curves were generated by logistic regression model for each predicting physical parameters.
The accident research of Hanover and (from 1999 on) Dresden registered 736 leg injuries (AIS ≥ 2) from 1983 to March 2007. 174 of these injuries (23.6 %) were fractures or dislocations of foot and ankle. 149 feet of 141 front seat car occupants in 140 cars were affected. Of these 117 were drivers, 24 were front seat passengers. The mean age of occupants was 38.5 -± 16.8 years. Ankle fractures were the most frequent injury (n = 82; 80 malleolar fractures, 2 pilon fractures). 34 fractures and dislocations affected the hindfoot (5 talus and 26 calcaneal fractures, 2 subtalar dislocations and 1 subtotal amputation) , 16 to midfoot (4 navicular fractures, 5 cuboid fractures, 3 fractures of cuneiformia, 2 dislocations of chopart joint, 1 subtotal amputation, and one severe decollement) and 39 the forefoot (metatarsal fractures). Open fractures were seldom seen (2 malleolar fractures, 1 metatarsal fracture). Both feet were injured in 10 cases. 33 occupants (23.4 %) were polytaumatic had a polytrauma, 17 of them died. 81 percent of the occupants were belted. The cars were divided in pre EuroNCAP (year of manufacture 1997 and older) and post EuroNCAP cars (year of manufacture 1998 and newer). Most of the foot injuries were seen in pre EuroNCAP cars. Most of the occupants sat in compact cars (40 drivers and 9 front seat passengers) and large family cars (27 drivers and 7 co-drivers). 49 of 140 accidents occurred on country roads, 26 on main roads and 13 on motorways. The crash direction was mostly frontal. Generally were found no differences of delta v- and EES-level between the injured foot regions, but divided into pre- and post-EuroNCAP cars there was a tendency to higher delta v- and EES-levels in newer cars. The frequency of foot injuries increased linearly with increasing delta v-level; but above delta v-level of 55 km/h the linear increase only was seen in pre-EuroNCAP cars, post-EuroNCAP cars showed no further increase of injuries. The footwell intrusion showed no difference between the injured foot regions but pre-EuroNCAP cars had a tendency to higher footwell intrusion. There were no differences in footwell intrusion between the car types. Only 29 of 174 fractures or dislocations of foot were seen in post-EuroNCAP cars, the predominate number of these injuries (n = 145) were noticed in pre-EuroNCAP cars. A lower probability of long-term impairment was found in post-EuroNCAP cars for equal delta v levels, using the AIS2008 associated Functional Capacity Index (FCI) for the foot region.
Recent findings from real-world accident data have shown that fatality risks for pedestrians are substantially lower than generally reported in the traffic safety literature. One of the keys to this insight has been the large and random sample of car-to-pedestrian crashes available in the German In-Depth Accident Study (GIDAS). Another key factor has been the proper use of weight factors in order to adjust for outcome-based sampling bias in the accident data. However, a third factor, a priori of unknown importance, has not yet been properly analysed. This is the influence of errors in impact speed estimation. In this study, we derived a statistical model of the impact speed errors for pedestrian accidents present in the GIDAS database. The error model was then applied to investigate the effect of the estimation error on the pedestrian fatality risk as a function of car impact speed. To this end, we applied a method known as the SIMulation-EXtrapolation (SIMEX) method. It was found that the risk curve is fairly tolerant to some amount of random measurement error, but that it does become flattened. It is therefore important that the accident investigations and reconstructions are of high quality to assure that systematic errors are minimised and that the random errors are under control.
Impact severity is a fundamental measure for all in-depth crash investigation projects. One methodology used in the UK is based on the US Calspan software package CRASH3. The UK- in-depth crash investigation studies routinely use AiDamage3 a software package which is based on an updated version of the original CRASH3 algorithm, including enhancements to the vehicle stiffness coefficients. Real world accident-damaged vehicles are measured and their crush is correlated with a library of stiffness coefficients. These measurements are then used, along with other parameters, to calculate the crash energy and equivalent changes of velocity of the vehicles (delta-v), which is a measure of the impact severity. UK in-depth accident studies routinely validate the crash severity methodologies applied as the vehicle fleet changes. This is achieved by analysing crash test data and using the appropriate residual crush damage and other inputs to AiDamage3 and checking the program- outputs with the known crash severity parameters. This procedure checks, at least in part, the default stiffness values in the data libraries and the reconstruction methods used.