Sonstige
Novice drivers are at high risk for crash involvement. We performed an analysis of causations, injury patterns and distributions of novice drivers in cars and on motorcycles in road traffic as a basis for proper measurements. Method Data of accident and hospital records of novice drivers (licence < 2 years) were analysed focusing the following parameters: injury type, localisation and mechanism, Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS), maximum AIS (MAIS), delta-v, collision speed and other technical parameters and have been compared to those of experienced drivers. In 18352 accidents in the area of Hannover (years1985"2004), 2602 novice drivers and 18214 experienced drivers were recorded having an accident. Novice car drivers were more often and severe injured than experienced and on motorcycles the experienced riders were at higher risk. Novice drivers of both groups sustained more often extremity injuries. 4.5 % novice car drivers were not restraint compared to 3.7 % of the experienced drivers and 6.1 % novice motorcycle drivers did not wear a proper helmet (versus 6.5 %). Severe injuries sustained at a rate of 20 % at collision speeds below 30 km/h and in 80% at collision speeds above 50 km/h. Novice car drivers drove significant older cars. The risk profile of novice drivers is similar to those of drivers older than 65 years. Structural protection and special lectures like skidding courses could be proper remedial action next to harder punishment of violations.
The purpose of this work is to investigate the association between the injuries in motorcycle accident and the main accident configurations. The data were provided by a multicentric case-control study MAIDS regarding the risk of crash and injuries of motorcyclists. Chi-square test was used to evaluate the relationship between the variables and a logistic regression was performed to evaluate the association of injury severity with some variables supposed to be predictive factors. Lesive patterns characterized by internal haemorrhages are mainly associated with fronto-lateral crashes, above all in urban areas. Lacerations or abrasions, mainly reported in torso and lower extremities, are mostly associated with single crashes or accidents in queue also for crashes occurred to low speed (< 50 km/h). The severity of injuries is highly associated with impact speed, regardless of the crash configuration. Fractures and haemorrhages play an important role in determining the severity of injuries. The upper extremities are the most frequently traumatised anatomic areas.
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.
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.
Nowadays, traffic accidents are recorded in historical databases. Regarding the huge quantity of data, the use of data mining tools is essential to help Experts, for automatically extracting relevant information in order to establish and quantify relations between severity and potential factors of accidents. An innovative approach is here proposed for an in depth investigation of real world accidents data base. Mutual information ratio based on conditional entropies is used to quantity the association strength between an accident outcome descriptor (injury severity) and other potential association factors. Information theoretic methods help to select automatically groups of factors mostly responsible of the severity of accident.
The share of high-tensile steel in car bodies has increased over the last years. While occupant safety has generally benefited from this measure, there is a potential risk that, as a result, rescue time may increase considerably. In more than 60% of all car occupant fatalities a technical rescue has been necessary. These are in particular those cases where occupants die immediately at the accident scene. Therefore, in these cases "rescue time" is a very sensitive parameter. In addition to the general analysis of the need of technical rescue and the actual rescue time depending on model years, the injury pattern of occupants requiring technical rescue will be analysed to provide advice for rescue teams. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of rescue measures for the most popular car models depending on the safety cell design is given.
The NHTSA-sponsored Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN) has collected and analyzed crash, vehicle damage, and detailed injury data from over 4000 case occupants who were patients admitted to Level-I trauma centers following involvement in motor vehicle crashes. Since 2005, CIREN has used a methodology known as "BioTab" to analyze and document the causes of injuries resulting from passenger vehicle crashes. BioTab was developed to provide a complete evidenced-based method to describe and document injury causation from in-depth crash investigations with confidence levels assigned to the causes of injury based on the available evidence. This paper describes how the BioTab method is being used in CIREN to leverage the data collected from in-depth crash investigations, and particularly the detailed injury data available in CIREN, to develop evidence-based assessments of injury causation. CIREN case examples are provided to demonstrate the ability of the BioTab method to improve real-world crash/injury data assessment.
Cyclists are more likely to be injured in fatal crashes than motorised vehicles. To gain detailed and precise behavioural data of road users, i.e. trajectories, a measuring campaign was conducted. Therefore, a black-spot for accidents with cyclists in Berlin, Germany was selected. The traffic has been detected by a fully automated traffic video analysis system continuously for twelve hours. The video surveillance system is capable of automatically extracting trajectories, classifying road user types and precise determining and positioning of conflicts and accidents. Additionally, pre-conflict and pre-accident situations could be analysed to provide further in-depth understanding of accident causation. The evaluation of the measuring campaign comprised the investigation of traffic parameters, e.g. traffic flow, as well as traffic-safety related parameters based on Surrogate Safety Measures (SSM). Furthermore, the spatial and temporal distributions of conflicts involving cyclists were determined. As a result, three possible conflict clusters could be identified, of which one cluster could be confirmed by detailed video analysis, showing conflicts caused by right turning vehicles.
This study updates previous IIHS studies comparing estimated delta Vs for crash tested vehicles to the distribution of estimated delta Vs in the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) Crashworthiness Data System (CDS). The delta V estimates for 232 frontal crash tests at 64.4km/h into a deformable barrier with 40 percent overlap are compared with estimates from frontal offset crashes in the 1997-2004 NASS database. All delta V estimates were based on SMASH, the delta V estimating program used by NASS since 1997. Results indicated that for all vehicles tested by IIHS, SMASH delta Vs were, on average, 32 percent lower than impact speeds and about 28 percent lower than the expected delta V. Almost 80 percent of all real-world frontal crashes resulting in AIS 3+ injuries and just over 60 percent of all fatal crashes occur at or below the average estimated delta V calculated for crash tested vehicles.
In India, heavy truck crashes on national highways account for a number of fatalities. But due to lack of in-depth crash data, detailed analysis is not possible to determine injury mechanisms, and to identify infrastructure, vehicle and human factors affecting these crashes. Over the past two years, researchers in India have established a crash investigation network, with the co-operation of the police and hospitals, to conduct crash investigations and in-depth crash data collection on national highways in the state of Tamil Nadu. This pioneering effort has resulted in the development of a heavy truck crash investigation methodology, the outcome of which is scientific and reliable crash data that has been able to provide good insight into truck crashes and their causes. This paper explains the need for truck crash investigations, the methodology, conclusions of the data analyzed up to date, and the need to focus on truck driver working conditions.
New vehicle types are extensively tested to check almost all factors that influence ride and handling. With reference to the Association of German Car Tuners" (VDAT e.V.) valuations, approximately 10% of all cars in Germany are being modified by their owners. 28 % of those modifications" sales are divergent wheel-tire combinations, 13 % are tuning measures on the chassis suspension or wheel spacers. In almost all cases the singular modifications present a general permission for specific vehicles they have been tested in. Combined tuning measures, however, are often checked by just one inspector, following a procedure of mostly subjective assessment criteria. Today, critical attributes are only being observed, in case a vehicle is involved in an accident and the modifications are identified as crash causal factors or as a cofactor on the development of a crash. For the first time, a field study allows a survey of safety affecting chassis modifications. The test layout has to comply with some basic conditions. Different vehicle concepts with a wide margin of modifications are required to get a high transferability of the results. A total amount of more than 150 tested vehicles serves the same purpose. The tests are limited concerning the installation time of measurement techniques and the requirement that no damage, defilement or immoderate wear of the vehicles are accepted by their owners. Due to such factors as well as the driver Ìs acceptance, the vehicles are controlled by its owners instead of robots or test drivers. For keeping down the driver- influence, the lane has narrow boundaries and the driver has to drive in strictly adherence to the given instructions. After gathering all modifications, as well as static and kinematic parameters like the toe and camber angle, dynamic testing of predominantly lateral dynamics is conducted. Besides standardized tests like the ISO 3888-2 (Obstacle Avoidance) or the ISO 14512 (Braking on Surfaces with Split Coefficient of Friction), to test the influence of modified kingpin offsets caused by wheel spacers, some deviant tests are conducted. Those are required due to the demand of objective test results for road tests with vertical induced stimulation of the chassis suspension. Hence, new tests on corner braking with and without vertical stimulation have been developed. The interpretation of data includes thresholds, e.g. the maximum entrance velocity without hitting cones, on the one hand, and the analysis of characteristics of data concerning time and frequency range, "1-second values" and peak response times on the other hand. Besides the thresholds as indicators for the achievable velocities, which are mainly affected by friction coefficients, the vehicle reaction in the course of time characterizes the vehicle reaction in the threshold range and consequently the operational demands on the driver. The field study has started and promises the first long-range analysis of chassis modifications. The results offer a basis for hypothesis and resultant further test layouts for oncoming studies of the identified critical tuning measures.
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).
Since 2005, the motorcycle crash fatalities in the US exceeded 10% of the overall annual traffic fatalities. Consequently, it has become critical to gain in-depth understanding of the factors and characteristics contributing to motorcycle crashes. Unfortunately, there currently exists no database gathering the necessary information for an in-depth analysis of the US motorcycle crashes. So this study utilizes the NASS/CDS database (National Automotive Sampling System, Crashworthiness Data System) in order to gain insights into the patterns and factors leading to a NASS/CDS motorcycle crash, from 1997 to 2007. NASS/CDS samples about 5,000 passenger car tow-away crashes per year. Each case includes photographs and detailed data on crash and pre-crash characteristics, vehicle types, trajectories, types of impact, and other pertinent roadway and crash scene information, allowing an in-depth investigation of the crash mechanisms. However, the NASS/CDS sampling process specifically focuses on passenger car crashes, so the cases extracted only correspond to crashes in which a passenger vehicle was towed, and a motorcycle was somehow involved. Thus, a by-hand in-depth review of about 200 cases allowed retrieving 106 relevant crashes for this study, tending to represent the severe passenger vehicle(s) versus motorcycle(s) crashes on US roads. The findings lead to the conclusion that these crashes mostly result from the low conspicuity of the motorcycle, and from the inability of the car drivers to fully appreciate and anticipate the behavior of a motorcycle. Indeed, it has been shown that, first, the car drivers involved in these cases did not attempt any avoidance maneuver, second, they were largely of ages under 25, and finally, the majority of the crashes were in an intersection scenario. In addition, the two major scenarios unveiled were the car attempting a left turn from the opposite direction and the car attempting a left turn from the right. The paper mentions several solutions to enhance the motorcycle- conspicuity and to allow the car drivers to better anticipate its behavior, which seem to be key factors in the intersection-related crashes (and more generally in the passenger vehicle(s) versus motorcycle(s) crashes).
The paper gives an overview of the recent (mostly 2012) figures of killed bus/coach occupants (drivers and passengers) in 27 Member States of the European Union as reported by CARE. The Evolution of the figures of bus/coach occupants killed in road accidents urban, rural without motorway and on motorways from 1991 to 2010 in 15 Member States of the EU supplements this information. More detailed are the figures reported for Germany by the Federal Statistics. The paper displays long-term evaluations (1957 to 2012) for killed, seriously and slightly injured occupants in all kinds of buses/coaches. Midterm evaluations (1995 to 2012) of the figures of fatalities and casualties are displayed for different busses according to their identification of road using as coaches, urban buses, school buses, trolley buses and "other buses". To be able to compare the evolutions of the safety of vehicle occupants it is customary to use different risk indicators. Calculations and illustrations for three often used indicators with their development over time are given: fatalities, seriously injured and slightly injured per 100,000 vehicles registered, per 1 billion (109) vehicle-kilometres travelled and per 1 billion (109) person-kilometres. These indicators are shown for occupants of cars, goods vehicles and buses/coaches. For the period from 1957 until 2012 it is obvious, that for all three vehicle categories analysed there was a clear long-term trend towards more occupant safety in terms of casualties per vehicles registered and per vehicle mileage. This was most significant for car occupants but it can be seen for bus/coach occupants and goodsvehicle occupants as well. Figures of killed occupants and of casualties related to person-kilometres are calculated and displayed for the shorter period 1995 to 2012. Here it becomes obvious that the bus/coach is still the safest mode of transport for the occupants of road vehicles. Graphs for the casualty risk indices still show significantly higher risks for car occupants despite the corresponding curve moved sustainable downwards. It is remarkable, that the risks of being killed or injured for the occupants of urban buses is growing whereas the corresponding risk for the occupants of coaches in line traffic tends downwards. The article ends with a short comparison and discussion of the risk indicators which are actually published for the occupants (driver and passengers) of cars and the passengers of buses/coaches, railroads, trams and airplanes. The interpretation of such information depends on the perception and it seems that for a complete view not only one indicator should be used and the evolutions of the indicator values during longer periods (as displayed with examples in the paper) should also be taken into account.
Aim of the study was to evaluate the protective effect of bicycle helmets particularly considering injuries to the head and to the face. Accidents with the participation of bicyclists which occurred from 2000 to 2007 were chosen from GIDAS. We observed that injuries to the head and face were more severe in the group of non-helmeted riders. There seems to be no significant difference in injuries with AIS 3-6. Altogether 26 cyclists were killed. 2 of them wore a helmet (1% of helmeted cyclists), 24 did not (1% of non-helmeted cyclists). Only one killed rider (without helmet) did not suffer from polytrauma (only head injuries recorded). The findings seem to support the thesis of a preventive effect of the bicycle helmet, however the two groups are different in their characteristics related to riding speed. Necessarily we need a multivariate model to evaluate the effect of helmets.
The primary goal of this investigation was to determine the relative risk of traffic accidents in students. In a two year period, a survey amongst 2,325 students was carried out, and 3,645 injuries sustained by students treated at our hospital were analyzed. Moped-riding in adolescents were associated with a 23.75-fold increased risk for injury as compared to biking. Children who ride bicycles have a 2.2-fold increased risk for an injury sustained by traffic accidents compared to pedestrians. None of 50 injured bicycle riders with helmet had an AIS for head injuries of more than 2. 24 of 233 injured bicycle drivers without helmet had an AIS for head injuries of more than 2. The use of a protective helmet significantly reduced the severity of head injuries. The level of awareness towards danger and a history of previous accidents correlate with the likelihood of future accidents. Due to the severity of traffic accidents, more adequate prevention measures (wearing of bicycle helmets and better education for moped riders) are urgently needed.
Estimation of the benefits for the UK for potential options to modify UNECE Regulation No. 95
(2010)
The side impact problem in Europe remains substantial. UK data shows that between 22% and 26% of car occupant casualties are involved in a side impact, but this rises to between 29% and 38% for those who are fatally injured. This indicates the more injurious nature of side impacts compared with frontal impacts. The European Enhanced Vehicle safety Committee (EEVC) has performed work to address the side impact issue since 1979. As part of its continuing work, it has recently investigated potential options for regulatory changes to improve side impact protection in cars further. To support this work the UK undertook an analysis to estimate the benefit for potential options to modify UNECE Regulation 95. The analysis used the UK national STATS19 and detailed Co-operative Crash Injury Study (CCIS) accident databases. Of the potential options reviewed, it was found that the addition of a pole test offered the greatest benefit.
SEEKING is looking for answers regarding electric powered bicycles and their relation to traffic safety issues. Does a cyclist need "E"? Is it as risky as riding a moped or are E-bikes creating conflicts with other cyclists? The project described herein, funded by the Austrian Ministry of Transport, has the aim of seeking answers to these hot topics. The SEEKING-team shows an in-depth investigation of vehicle dynamic sensing, together with subjective feedback of test riders to detect similarities and differences between conventional cycling and E-biking. Following an overview on the international status quo, measurement runs and their analyses are performed to find a set of preventative measures to make (E-)biking safer. A specific focus is the detection of curve handling, stopping and acceleration phases as well as conflict studies on course-based test rides and "real world" tests on cycling paths (naturalistic riding).
Crash involvement studies using routine accident and exposure data : a case for case-control designs
(2009)
Fortunately, accident involvement is a rare event: the chance of an individual road user trip to end up in a crash is close to zero. Thus, according to general epidemiological principles one can expect the case-control study design to be especially suitable for quantifying the relative risk (odds ratio) of accident involvement of road users with a certain risk factor as compared to road users that do not have this characteristic. Ideally, of course, the database for such a case-control study should be established by drawing two independent random samples of cases (accidental units) and controls (nonaccidental units), respectively. If, however, special data collection is not an option, it is nevertheless possible to analyze routine accident and exposure data under a case-control design in order to fully exploit the information contained in already existing databases. As a prerequisite, accident and exposure data from different sources are to be combined in a single file of micro or grouped data in a way consistent with the case-control study design. Among other things, the proposed methodological approach offers the possibility to use in-depth data of the GIDAS type also in investigations of active vehicle safety by combining this data with appropriate vehicle trip data collected in mobility surveys.
In order to enable foreseeing or comparing the benefit of safety systems or driver assistance systems in Germany, in the United States and in Japan, the traffic accident databases in those three countries are examined. The variables used are culpable party, collision partner, accident type, and injury level and the method to re-classify the databases for comparison are proposed. The result indicates that single passenger car fatality is the most frequent in Germany and in the United States, while passenger car vs. pedestrian is the most frequent fatality scenario in Japan. When the casualty by fatality ratio is focused, the greatest difference is observed in rear-end collisions. The ratio of slight injuries in Japan yields about eighteen times as many as those in Germany, and about eight times as many as those in the United States.