Sonstige
This study is aimed to investigate the correlations of impact conditions and dynamic responses with the injuries and injury severity of child pedestrians by accident reconstruction. For this purpose, the pedestrian accident cases were selected from Sweden and Germany with detailed information about injuries, accident cars, and accident environment. The selected accident cases were reconstructed using mathematical models of pedestrian and passenger car. The pedestrian models were generated based on the height, weight, and age of the pedestrian involved in accidents. The car models were built up based on the corresponding accident car. The impact speeds in simulations were defined based on the reported data. The calculated physical quantities were analyzed to find the correlation with injury outcomes registered in the accident database. The reconstruction approaches are discussed in terms of data collection, estimating vehicle impact speeds, pedestrian moving speeds and initial posture, secondary ground impact, validity of the mathematical models, as well as impact biomechanics.
Due to recent years accident avoidance and crashworthiness on Austrian roads were mostly developed on national statistics and on-scene investigation respectively. Identification and elimination of black spots were main targets. In fact many fatal accidents do not occur on such black spots and black-spot investigation has reached a limit. New methods are required and therefore the Austrian Road Safety Programme was introduced by the Austrian Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology. The primary objective is the reduction of fatalities and severe injuries. Graz University of Technology initiated the project ZEDATU (Zentrale Datenbank tödlicher Unfälle) with the goal to identify similarities in different accident configurations. A matrix was established which categorizes risk and key factors of participating parties. Based on this information countermeasures were worked out.
The need for improved EU level accident information and data was identified in the EU White Paper on Transport Policy (2001)1 and detailed in the Road Safety Action Plan (2003)2. The plan specifies that the EC will develop a road safety observatory to coordinate data collection within an integrated framework.
76 severe traffic accidents had been investigated in depth in an ongoing Volkswagen-Tongji University joint accident research project in JiaDing district, Shanghai, PR China since June 2005. With a methodology similar to German accident research units in Dresden and Hannover, a research team proceeds to the scene immediately after the incident to investigate and collect various data on environment, accident occurrence, vehicle state and deformations as well as injuries. The data combined with the results of accident reconstruction will be stored in a database for further statistical and casuistic analysis. The first outcome of the project supports the hypothesis that a main causation for the large number of traffic accidents in China is the lacking of risk awareness in Chinese driver behaviour. Low seat-belt use and the high proportion of vulnerable and poorly protected two-wheelers in traffic are reasons for the high injury and fatality rate in China. The research work shows that accident research in China is feasible and able to give support to tackle one of the urging problems in Chinese development.
Relevant accident related factors : risk and frequencies of contributing to road traffic accidents
(2009)
In the course of the European Project TRACE (Traffic Accident Causation in Europe) an attempt was made to analyse the cause of road traffic accidents from a factors' point of view. By literature review the most important independent risk factors for traffic accidents were identified to be speed, alcohol intake, male gender, young age, cell phone use, and fatigue. However, the impact of an accident related factor also depends on its prevalence in traffic and accidents, respectively. Available to the Partners in the TRACE Project were different accident databases. Causally contributing factors found by accident investigations that are most often coded in accident databases are connected to unadapted speed and inattention. Taking into account the risk increase and the frequency of contribution to accidents the conclusion can be drawn that the most relevant factors for accident causation are: "alcohol", "speed", and "inattention and distraction".
In an on-going project since 2005, ADAC has been analyzing accidents documented by the ADAC air rescue service. The knowledge derived from real-life accidents serves as a basis for new test configurations and assessment criteria. In 2007, ADAC began looking into the feasibility of international data collection. The idea of Global Accident Prevention was born. Three European partner clubs have begun pioneering the project (ÖAMTC, ANWB, and RACC). The aim is to set up an international accident research network to provide a steady stream of information on road accidents. The FIA Foundation supports ADAC in developing and coordinating this initiative.
An approach to the standardization of accident and injury registration systems (STAIRS) in Europe
(1998)
STAIRS is a European Commission funded study whose aim is to produce a set of guidelines for a harmonised, crash injury database. The need to evaluate the effectiveness of the forthcoming European Union front and side impact directives has emphasised the need for real world crash injury data-sets that can be representative of the crash population throughout Europe. STAIRS will provide a methodology to achieve this. The ultimate aim of STAIRS is to produce a set of data collection tools which will aid decision making on vehicle crashworthiness as well as providing a means to evaluate the effectiveness of safety regulations. This paper will disseminate the up-to-date findings of the group as they try to harmonise their methods. The stage has been reached where studies into the diverse methods of the UK, French and German systems of crash injury investigation have been undertaken. An assessment has already been made of the relationships between the three current systems in order to define the areas of agreement and divergence. The conclusions reached stated that there were many areas that are already closely related and that the differences were only at the detailed level. With the emphasis on secondary safety and injury causation, core data sets were decided upon, taking into account: vehicle description, collision configuration, structural response of vehicles, restraint and airbag performance, child restraint performance, Euro NCAP, pedestrian and vehicle occupant kinematics, injury description and causation. Each variable was studied objectively, the important elements isolated and developed into a form that all partners were agreeable on. A glossary of terms is being developed as the project progresses which includes ISO standards and other definitions from the associated CAREPLUS project, which addresses the comparability of national data sets. A major consideration of the group was the data collection method to be employed. The strengths and weaknesses of each study were investigated to obtain a clear idea of which aspects offered the best way forward. The quality of this information and transference into a common format, as well as the necessary error checking systems to be employed have just been completed and are described. In tandem with this area of study the problem of the statistical relationship of each sample to the national population is also being investigated. The study proposes a mechanism to use a sample of crash injury data to represent the national and international crash injury problem
In Germany, in-depth accident investigations are carried out in the Hannover area since 1973. In 1999 a second region was added with surveys in Dresden and the surrounding area. Internationally, the acronym GIDAS (German In-Depth Accident Study) is commonly used for these surveys. Compared to many other countries, the sample sizes of the GIDAS surveys are much larger. The goal is to collect 1.000 accidents involving personal injuries per year and region. Data collection takes place by using a sampling procedure, which can be interpreted as a two-stage process with time intervals as primary units and accidents as secondary units. An important question is, to what extend these samples are representative for the target population from which they are drawn. Analyses show, for example, that accidents with persons killed or seriously injured are overrepresented in the samples compared to accidents with slightly injured persons. This means, that these data are subject to biases due to uncontrolled variation of sample inclusion probability. Therefore, appropriate weighting and expansion methods have to be applied in order to adjust or correct for these biases. The contribution describes the statistical and methodological principles underlying the GIDAS surveys with respect to sampling procedure, data collection and expansion. In addition, some suggestions regarding potential improvements of study design are made from a methodological point of view.
This paper describes the methodology of In-Depth Investigation in Germany on the example of GIDAS (German In-Depth Accident Study). Since 1999 in Germany a joint project between FAT (Forschungsvereinigung Automobiltechnik or Automotive Industry Research Association) and BASt (Bundesanstalt für Straßenwesen or the Federal Road Research Institute) is being carried out in Hannover and Dresden. The methodology of this project is based on a statistically orientated procedure of data sampling (sampling plan, weighting factors). The paper describes the possibilities of such in-depth investigation on the results of the offered title. The accident cases were collected randomly within GIDAS at Hannover. There are more cases existing from previous investigation started in 1985 under the same methodology. The portion of rollovers can be established at 3.7% of all accidents with casualties in the year 2000. For the study 434 cases of car accidents with rollovers are used for a detail comprehensive analysis. The accidents happened in the years 1994 to 2000 in the Hannover area. The injury distribution will report about 741 occupants with rollover accident event. The presented paper will give an overview of the accident situations following in rollover movements of cars. The distributions of injury frequencies, injury severity AIS for the whole body and for the body regions of occupants will be presented and compared to technical details like the impact speed and the deformation pattern. The speed of the car was determined at the point of rollover and on the point of accident initiency. The characteristics of the kinematics followed in a rollover movement are analyzed and the major defined types of rollover will be shown in the paper. The paper will describe the possibilities of In-Depth Investigation methods for the approach of finding countermeasures on the example of car accidents with rollover and explaining the biomechanics of injuries in rollover movements.
A lot of factors are related to a road traffic accident; particularly human factors such as road use characteristic, driving maneuver characteristic and safety attitude are the major ones. As a random factor is also included, so it is necessary to minimize the contribution of a random factor to identify human factors related to a road traffic accident. There are several standpoints for traffic accident analysis, such as vehicle-based, location-based and driver-based. And it is effective to analyze driver-based traffic accident data for discussion on the relation between human factors and accidents. An integrated traffic accident database system was developed for analysis considering driver- accident and violation records by ITARD, and several studies were carried out for the evaluation. Useful data for discussion on the relation between types of collision and traffic violations, and the effect of accident experience to the following accident were obtained.