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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.
NASS: the glass is half full
(2007)
The National Accident Sampling System (NASS) was born in the late 1970s. It was based on a substantial amount of experience and analysis of what was needed in the United States to understand the safety challenges of our highways. This work also showed how to collect high quality and useful crash data efficiently. Unfortunately, when Ronald Reagan - a President who believed in limited government - was elected, any hope of full funding for NASS was lost. The concept of 75 teams investigating about 18,000 serious crashes in detail annually was never realized. The system got up to 50 teams, then was cut to 36, and finally to 24 teams investigating fewer than a quarter of the originally anticipated number of crashes per year. Despite this, the NASS investigations provide a rich source of data, collected according to a sophisticated statistical sampling system to facilitate detailed national estimates of road casualties on our nation- highways and their causes. In addition, changes have been made in recent years to increase the number of more serious crashes of recent model vehicles to make the results more relevant to improving vehicle safety. A recent, detailed examination of hundreds of rollovers has provided considerable insight into rollover casualties and into what can be done to reduce them. Some of these results will be presented that show the value of the NASS system. Our experience with NASS and the Fatal Accident Reporting System (FARS) suggests a number of improvements that could be made in the United States" crash data systems. It also provides justification for a doubling or tripling of our national expenditures on crash data collection.
The increase in light duty trucks (LDT) on the road in the US is a safety concern because of their aggressivity, or risk they present to occupants of cars, especially in side impacts. We use FARS data to look at fatality trends in frontal and side impacts between cars and LDT. FARS data is also used to determine risk, or fatalities per registered vehicle, imposed on car drivers from other vehicle types. We use NASS CDS data to investigate sources of serious injuries in vehicles with side impact. These sources of injury are categorized into three major groups: 1) contact without intrusion, 2) contact with intrusion, and 3) restraints. We find a greater fraction of intrusion related injuries in cars struck on their side by SUV or pick-up trucks than when they are struck by other cars.
In Finland all fatal motor vehicle accidents are studied in-depth on-the-spot by multidisciplinary (police, road and vehicle engineers, physician and behavioural scientist) road accident investigation teams (legislation 2001, work started 1968), which operate in every province. The purpose of the teams is to uncover risk factors that turned an ordinary driving situation into a serious accident and give safety recommendations for improving road safety. The investigation teams do not take a stand on guilt or insurance compensation. When analysing accidents the teams use the concepts of key event, immediate, background and injury risk factors. Compiled investigation folders of each case contain investigation forms from each member, preinvestigation protocol, photographs, sketches etc. About 500 items of information are collected from each accident party. The collected information is also coded into a computer database. Both the database and the investigation folders are widely utilized by researchers and authorities conducting safety work.
In the context of this study, different data sources for accident research were examined regarding their possible data access and evaluated concerning the individual quality and extent of the data. Analyses of accidents require detailed and comprehensive information in particular concerning vehicle damages, injury patterns and descriptions of the accident sequence. The police documentation supplies the basic accident statistics and is amended in the context of the forensic treatment by further information, e.g. by medical and technical appraisals and witness questionings. As a new approach to the data acquisition for the analysis of fatal traffic accidents, the information was made usable which was collected by the police and by the investigations of the public prosecutor. The best strategy for obtaining reliable, extensive and complete data consists of combining the information from these two sources: the very complete, but elementary statistic data of the Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Statistik (Lower Saxony State Authority of Statistics), based on the police documentation as well as the very extensive accident information resulting from the investigation documentation of the public prosecutor after conclusion of the procedure, the so-called Court Records. Of all 715 fatal traffic accidents, which happened in the year 2003 in the German State of Lower Saxony, 238 cases were selected by means of a statistically coincidental selective procedure based on a statistically representative manner (every third accident). These cases cover the investigation documents of the 11 responsible public prosecutor- offices, which were requested and evaluated while preserving the data security. Of the 238 cases 202 cases were available, which were individually coded and stored in a data base using 160 variables. Thus a data base of a sample of representative data for fatal accidents in Lower Saxony was set up. The data base contains extensive information concerning general accident data (35 variables), concerning road and road surface data (30 variables), concerning vehicle-specific data (68 variables) as well as concerning personal and injury data (27 variables).
The significant demographic changes are predicted for the European future. The age group over 65 years is permanently increasing and over next 30 years every fourth person will belong to this group. This development will continue so far that by 2050 in many countries will double the percentage of the population aged 65 and more. Many studies analyze the new phenomena of the ageing (graying) society during the last decade. Mobility is integrated part of the life of every citizen, even more it means for the elderly people. The adequate mobility is the precondition for their active life and for their social communication that contribute to their health and functional capacity and their autonomy and independency. The active seniors demand less public support. The mobility of the older citizens is closely linked with health and societal problems and creates an important public challenge. On the other side the participation of seniors in transport due to their limited physical and mental possibilities means for them an increased risk to be injured or killed. The main mobility spaces are roads that can be used not only as a traveler in a vehicle (driver or passenger) but also as a pedestrian or cyclist or even as a motorcyclist. The road traffic is then an opportunity and danger in the same time. The accident analyzes show specific risk features of seniors that are different compared with other age groups. First of all the older road users (65 and more) are facing to the higher risk (number of killed divided by the population size) to be killed in a road accident compared with the group of younger road users (0 - 64). More significant difference can be observed when comparing the road user groups. The fatality percentage of the older pedestrians is 2,5 times higher compared with the group 25 " 64. Similar frequency show the cyclist fatalities. On the other side the vehicle passengers in the younger group have more or less two time higher percentage compared to seniors and in the group of motorcyclists even achieved in 2008 almost five times higher compared with the older group. The share of the old road users fatalities (around 19%) didn"t practically change during the last 10 years in the European average. But comparing the gender involvement (2006) there is an interesting difference " female fatalities make 30, 2%, male fatalities 15, 3% of all fatalities in their groups. The risk of the senior users is more connected with their physical and mental limits than with their risk behavior. According to the Czech statistics (2007) the vehicle drivers over 65 years cause only 3, 6% of all accidents. The solution of the problem is to minimize the risk and to create a safe environment for the elderly people using the roads. In order to achieve this goal a deep knowledge of risk and of accident circumstances, full understanding of the behavior of the seniors and their limitations and accommodating approach of the whole society is necessary. Road risk of the ageing society has to be considered as a part of the health and social policy. These can build a creditable basis for the implementation of the measures that secure safe moving of seniors on the roads.