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One of the major problems of road safety in Europe is the powered two wheelers accidents. One of the European countries with one of the highest rates is Portugal where in 2006, mopeds and motorcycles fatalities represented 27% of all road users deaths. In this work, a deep analysis and overview of the current state of mopeds and motorcycles accidents for the 2004-2006 period is presented. Within this period 830 PTW occupants die, 2958 have been severely injured and 25000 suffer slight injuries. A detailed analysis of the conditions of these accidents has been carried out, using the data of the national accident database. This analysis provides global information, about geographic environmental conditions, driver- characteristics among others. From this data detailed information is obtained allowing to know when, where and who. In order to answer the question why more a widely collection of data has been collect for 70 accidents. The data has been collected using OECD methodology. For these accidents a detailed reconstruction has been carried out, what is especially important for fatal accidents where for instance speed in an important factor. From these collection and analysis of data a wider overview of facts and measures are extracted. Among them, some are emphasized such as that the quality and non-use of helmets plays an important role in severe and fatal accidents especially for accidents involving moped vehicles, or speed is the most important factor in fatal accidents involving motorcycles. Concerning motorcycle accident reconstruction, different tools can be used depending of the accident scenario and complexity. For simple cases, with specific characteristics, analytical formulation based in vehicle crash dynamics can be use in order to determine the impact speed of the vehicles impact, analysing the skid marks, deformations, victims rest position and considering parameters (EES, vehicle deceleration, etc). Aspects such as the energy absorption capability of motorcycles are also discussed. In the general cases the accident reconstruction software Pc-Crash has been used for the reconstruction of the accident. In very complex cases, has for instance the impact between motorcyclist and barriers, Madymo software is used especially to determine speed from injuries. An example of the impact of a motorcyclist and a motorcyclist-friendly barrier is present to illustrate the benefits and limitations of such systems.
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.
Empirical vehicle crashworthiness studies are usually based on national or in-depth traffic accident surveys: Data on accident-involved cars/drivers are analysed in order to quantify the chance of driver injury and to assess certain risk factors like car make and model. As the cars/drivers involved in the same accident form a "cluster", where the size of the cluster equals the number of accident-involved parties, traffic accident survey data are typical multi-level data with accidents as first-level or primary and cars/drivers as secondlevel or secondary units (car occupants in general are to be considered as third level units). Consequently, appropriate statistical multi-level models are to be used for driver injury risk estimation purposes as these models properly account for the cluster structure of traffic accident survey data. In recent years various types of regression models for clustered data have been developed in the statistical sciences. This paper presents multi-level statistical models, which are generally applicable for vehicle crashworthiness assessment in the sense that data on single and multiple car crashes can be analysed simultaneously. As a special case of multi-level modelling driver injury risk estimation based on paired-by-collision car/driver data is considered. It is demonstrated that assessment results may be seriously biased, if the cluster structure inherent in traffic accident survey data is erroneously ignored in the data analysis stage.
While the number of fatal accidents is diminishing every year, there is still a need of improvement and action to prevent these deaths. Basis for this purpose has to be an analysis about the factors influencing the car crash mortality. There are various studies describing the univariate influence of several factors, but crash scenarios are too complex to be described by a single variable. The multivariate analysis respects the interference of the variables and gets so to more detailed and representative results. This multivariate analysis is based on about 2,600 cases (the data have been collected by the accident research units Hannover and Dresden (during the years 1999-2003). This paper presents a multivariate model (containing ten different variables) which detects 93% of these cases properly. This means it detects the cases as truly survived and truly death.
Internationally, the need is expressed for harmonized traffic accident data collection (PSN, PENDANT, etc.). Together with this effort of harmonization, traffic accident investigation moves more and more in the direction of accident causation. As current methods only partly address these needs, a new method was set up. The main characteristics of this method are: • Accident/injury causation (associated) factors can objectively be identified and quantified, by comparison with exposure information from a normal population. • All relevant accident and exposure data can be included: human-, vehicle-, and environmental related data for the pre-crash, crash and postcrash situation (the so-called Haddon matrix). The level of detail can be chosen depending on interest and/or budget, which makes the method very flexible. In this paper the accident collection and control group method are presented, including some of the achieved results from a pilot study on 30 truck accidents and 30 control locations. The data were analyzed by using cross-tabulations and classification-tree analysis. The method proved useful for the identification of statistically significant causational aspects.
Side impacts, both nearside and farside, have been indicated by research to be responsible for a large proportion of serious injuries from road crashes. This study aimed to compare and contrast the characteristics of nearside and farside crashes in Australia, Germany and the U.S., using the ANCIS, GIDAS and NASS/CDS in-depth-databases, in order to establish the impact and injury severity associated with these crashes, and the types of injuries sustained. The analyses revealed some interesting similarities, as well as differences, between both nearside and farside crashes, and the emergent trends between the three investigated countries. More specifically, it was indicated that whilst the severity of injury sustained in nearside crashes was slightly greater overall than that found for farside crashes, careful consideration of struck and nonstruck side occupants must be made when considering aspects such as vehicle design and occupant protection.
The declining trend since 1991 in the number of killed people was broken in 2011 when overall 4 009 people died in traffic accidents in Germany. The question arises if there is a stagnating trend of fatalities in Germany in future? By breaking down the accidents with casualties towards a monthly view one can see a decreasing trend of fatalities in the warmer months especially since 2009. When comparing against winter months higher deviations are observed. In December 2011 an increase of 191 traffic deaths were registered (181 in 2010 compared to 372 in 2011). Further analyses of different accident influences were evaluated and their possibility of drastic change from one year to the other was determined. As seen weather- and environmental conditions are one of the major contributing factors and are one of the causes for the increased number of fatalities. To support the underlying assumption a model had been created to calculate the number of traffic deaths on a daily basis approach. As an input, road conditions projected through weather parameters and also different driving behaviors on weekdays or holidays were used. As a result, estimates of daily fatality with up to 75% precision can be achieved out of the 2009, 2010 and 2011 data. Further on it shows that weather and street conditions have a high influence on the overall resulting number of traffic accidents with casualties, and especially to the number of fatalities. Hence it is estimated that approximately 3 300 people were killed in traffic accidents in Germany in 2013 which would be again a reduction of another 13% compared to 2012. Therefore an answer to the question will be that the decreasing trend in traffic fatalities in Germany somehow is not broken when environmental conditions are included in national statistics. Their effects will become more visible in future accident statistics and it is estimated variances of 5% to 8% of the annual number of traffic fatalities in Germany will be seen.
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.
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.
This study examines the severity and types of injuries sustained by child pedestrians aged 18 years and below in order to identify the body regions at greatest risk for injury in a pedestrian accident. Detailed medical diagnoses were reviewed retrospectively for 572 child pedestrians admitted to an urban pediatric trauma center with injuries during the time period from January 2001 to December 2005. Eighty percent of these children sustained AIS 2 or greater injuries, most commonly to the lower extremity (41%) and head (34%). Fortyfour percent of admitted children had more significant AIS 3 or greater injuries primarily to the head (58%), thorax (17%) and lower extremities (14%). Testing procedures to assess the child- interaction with the motor vehicle should include injury assessment for the pediatric head, thorax and lower extremities. This understanding of how child pedestrians interact with motor vehicles may provide insight into effective countermeasures with potential for implementation in vehicle designs world-wide.
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.
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.
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 increasing economics in India has an enormous growth of its road traffic. As observed from official Indian accident statistics the number of road fatalities are one of the highest worldwide. In contrast to most industrialized nations they have an rapidly increasing trend. To come along with this trend it becomes more than essential to understand the traffic accident situation. The official Indian accident statistics gives a glimpse of only basic information. Therefore more detailed data is needed. By using In-depth accident data and officially representative statistics the current accident situation can be evaluated in India, if a suitable weighting methodology is considered. Hence in 2009/2010 a pilot study with the collaboration partner JP-Research India pvt. Ldt. was gathered in Tamil Nadu in south of India. In-depth accident investigations were done around the Coimbatore area on four highways. At first, the collected data is evaluated. Due to consequent and continuous further development based on the first approach a methodology similar to NASS/CDS/GES in the US and GIDAS in Germany was developed. Of course all relevant accident related parameters including pictures and severity information were collected. As a matter of fact based on scaled sketches and reconstruction benefit analyses can be done in order to analyze the accident scenery in India. As a first outcome influence from infrastructure, missing education and vehicle safety were identified as key parameters in order to reduce the number of accidents and casualties. To compare the accident situation against international standards an accident classification for left hand traffic was developed based on the German Insurance classification system. Looking into detail additional accident types were identified and added to create an Indian accident type catalogue. The positive results encouraged several OEMs to participate in this investigation and together with BOSCH a consortium was established in 2010/11. Within one year from beginning in May 2011 about 200 highway accidents were collected, reported and reconstructed using the new standard. Hence a first good overview of the accident situation is available for the Coimbatore Tamil Nadu area. The major target for establishing accident investigations is the extension towards other states of India and urban areas to achieve a better overview of the accident scenery. Therefore local and national authorities have to be embedded in order to strengthen the awareness against traffic safety.
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).
Data concerning accidents involving personal injury which have been collected in the context of in-depth investigations on scene in the Hannover area since 1973 and in the Dresden area since 1999 represent an important basis for empirical traffic safety research. At national and international level various analyses and comparisons are carried out on the basis of "in-depth data" from the above mentioned investigations. In-depth data play a decisive role e.g. within the validation of EuroNCAP results on secondary safety (crashworthiness) of individual passenger car models. Thus, statistically sound methods of data analysis and population parameter estimation are of high importance. Since the 1st of August 1984 the "in-depth investigations on scene" in the Hannover area have been carried out according to a sampling plan developed by HAUTZINGER in the context of a research project on behalf of BASt. In the meantime a second region of in-depth investigation on scene was added with surveys in Dresden and the surrounding area. Internationally, the acronym GIDAS (German In-Depth Accident Study) is commonly used for the two above mentioned surveys. The objective of a current research project (topic of this contribution) is, among other things, to examine and adjust the previous weighting and expansion method for the two regional accident investigations to the current general conditions.
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.
Although the annual traffic accident statistics published by the national police is available in public, the detailed traffic accident data has not been released in Korea. Recently the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport recognized the importance of in-depth accident data to enhance road traffic safety and initiated a research project to establish a collection of the detailed accident data. The main objective of the project is a feasibility study to establish KIDAS (Korea In-Depth Accident Study). Within this project, three university hospitals which are located in mid-size cities have been selected to collect accident data. Annually, more than 500 cases of accidents have been collected from the in-patient's interviews and diagnosis. Unlike GIDAS (German In-Depth Accident Study), currently on-site investigation can"t be performed by the Korean police. The only available data is patient medical records, patient's description of accident circumstances and the damaged vehicle. Occasionally the police provide the accident investigation reports containing very brief information on accident causation and vehicle safety. In a first step, the concept of KIDAS is to adopt the format of iGLAD (Initiative for the Global Harmonization of Accident Data) for harmonization. Since the currently collected accident information is extremely limited compared with GIDAS, the other sources of data and calculations such as KNCAP vehicle data, pc-crash simulations, vehicle registration information, insurance company data are utilized to complete the iGLAD template. Results from KIDAS_iGLAD and the cases of assessment of active safety devices such as AEBS, ESC, and LDWS will be evaluated.
The Powered Two Wheelers (PTWs) accidents constitute one of the road safety targets in Europe. PTWs users' fatalities represent 15% of EU road fatalities, having increased the last few years, which is quite opposite than other road users casualties. To reduce PTW accidents is necessary to know which the accident causations are from different points of view (human factor, vehicle characteristics, environment, type of accident, situation, etc.). In TRACE project ("Traffic Accident Causation in Europe", under the European Commission 6th Framework Program, 2006-2008,) a specific task was focused on PTW users point of view, analyzing extensive databases to locate the main accident configurations (type of accident, severity, frequency), and an in-depth database to obtain the causation factors, the risk factors for each configuration founded in the extensive databases analysis and the variables associated to each causation factor in the PTW configurations.
Although the statistics show a decreasing rate of child injuries and fatalities in German road accidents more efforts can be made to protect children in cars e.g. by developing appropriate child restraint systems. An important part in of this work can be achieved with the help of crash tests using child dummies. However these crash tests cannot completely reflect the situation of real world crashes as factors like children moving out of the optimal position or children incorrectly fastened by their parents are difficult to predict. Therefore this study gives an overview over the current accident and injury situation of child occupants in cars in German road accidents.
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.
The aim of this study is to investigate the differences in car occupant injury severity recorded in AIS 2005 compared to AIS 1990 and to outline the likely effects on future data analysis findings. Occupant injury data in the UK Cooperative Crash Injury Study Database (CCIS) were coded for the period February 2006 to November 2007 using both AIS 1990 and AIS 2005. Data for 1,994 occupants with over 6000 coded injuries were reviewed at the AIS and MAIS level of severities and body regions to determine changes between the two coding methodologies. Overall there was an apparent general trend for fewer injuries to be coded at the AIS 4+ severity and more injuries to be coded at the AIS 2 severity. When these injury trends were reviewed in more detail it was found that the body regions which contributed the most to these changes in severity were the head, thorax and extremities. This is one of the first studies to examine the implications for large databases when changing to an updated method for coding injuries.
This paper uses the national accident statistics of Great Britain to evaluate the effectiveness of Electronic Stability Control Systems (ESC) to reduce crash involvement rates. The crash experience of 8,951 cars is analysed and compared to a closely matching set of non-ESC cars using case-control methods. This is one of the largest ESC samples analysed to date. Overall the cars with ESC are involved in 3% fewer crashes although the effectiveness is substantially higher under conditions of adverse road friction. ESC equipped cars are involved in 15% fewer fatal crashes although this reduction represents the combined effect of ESC and passive safety improvements.
The national accident statistics demonstrate that the situation of passenger car side impacts is dominated by car to car accidents. Car side to pole impacts are relatively infrequent events. However the importance of car side to pole impacts is significantly increasing with fatal and seriously injured occupants. For the present study the German in-depth database GIDAS (German In-Depth-Accident Study) and the UK based database CCIS (Co-operative Crash Injury Study) were used. Two approaches were undertaken to better understand the scenario of car to pole impacts. The first part is a statistical analysis of passenger car side to pole impacts to describe the characteristics and their importance relevant to other types of impact and to get further knowledge about the main factors influencing the accident outcome. The second part contains a case by case review on passenger cars first registered 1998 onwards to further investigate this type of impact including regression analysis to assess the relationship between injury severity and pole impact relevant factors.
The presence and performance of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) has increased over last years. Systems available on the market address also conflicts with vulnerable road users (VRUs) such as pedestrians and cyclists. Within the European project PROSPECT (Horizon2020, funded by the EC) improved VRU ADAS systems are developed and tested. However, before determining systems" properties and starting testing, an up-to-date analysis of VRU crashes was needed in order to derive the most important Use Cases (detailed crash descriptions) the systems should address. Besides the identified Accident Scenarios (basic crash descriptions), this paper describes in short the method of deriving the Use Cases for car-to-cyclist crashes. Method Crashes involving one passenger car and one cyclist were investigated in several European crash databases looking for all injury severity levels (slight, severe and fatal). These data sources included European statistics from CARE, data on national level from Germany, Sweden and Hungary as well as detailed accident information from these three countries using GIDAS, the Volvo Cars Cyclist Accident database and Hungarian in-depth accident data, respectively. The most frequent accident scenarios were studied and Use Cases were derived considering the key aspects of these crash situations (e.g., view orientation of the cyclist and the car driver- manoeuvre intention) and thus, form an appropriate basis for the development of Test Scenarios. Results Latest information on car-to-cyclist crashes in Europe was compiled including details on the related crash configurations, driving directions, outcome in terms of injury severity, accident location, other environmental aspects and driver responsibilities. The majority of car-to-cyclist crashes occurred during daylight and in clear weather conditions. Car-to-cyclist crashes in which the vehicle was traveling straight and the cyclist is moving in line with the traffic were found to result in the greatest number of fatalities. Considering also slightly and seriously injured cyclists led to a different order of crash patterns according to the three considered European countries. Finally the paper introduced the Use Cases derived from the crash data analysis. A total of 29 Use Cases were derived considering the group of seriously or fatally injured cyclists and 35 Use Cases were derived considering the group of slightly, seriously or fatally injured cyclists. The highest ranked Use Case describes the collision between a car turning to the nearside and a cyclist riding on a bicycle lane against the usual driving direction. A unified European dataset on car-to-cyclist crash scenarios is not available as the data available in CARE is limited, hence national datasets had to be used for the study and further work will be required to extrapolate the results to a European level. Due to the large number of Use Cases, the paper shows only highest ranked ones.
The purpose of this study was to analyse the actual injury situation of bicyclists regarding accidents involving more than one bicyclist. Bicyclists were included in a medical and technical analysis to create a basis for preventive measures and discovered repeating accident patterns and circumstances such as daytime, environment, helmet use rate. Technical and medical data were collected at the scene, shortly after accident. The population was compared focusing on bicycle versus bicycle accidents. Technical analysis included speed at crash, type of collision, impact angle, environment, used lane and relative velocity. Medical analysis included injury pattern and severity (AIS, ISS). Included were 578 injured bicyclists in 289 accidents from years 1999 to 2008, 61 percent were male (n=350) and 39 percent female (n=228). Sixty-seven percent ranged between 18 to 64 years of age, twelve percent each between 13 to 17 years of age and older than 65 years, eight percent between 6 to 12 years and one percent between 2 to 5 years.. Crashes took place in urban areas in 92 percent, in rural areas in 8 percent. Weather conditions were dry lanes in 97 percent and wet conditions in 3 percent. Eighty-three percent of all accidents happened during daytime, ten percent during night, and seven percent during dawn. The helmet use rate was only 7,5 percent in all involved bicyclists. The mean Maximum Abbreviated injury scale, Injury severity score was 1,31. Bicyclists are still minimally- or unprotected road users. The helmet use rate is unsatisfactorily low. The incidence of bicycle to bicycle crashes is high. Most of these accidents take place in urban areas. The level and pattern of injuries is moderate. Most of the more severe injuries occur to the head and could have been avoided by frequent helmet use.
An eCall device has been mounted on some vehicles in France since 2003. It is an integrated car radio/GSM/GPS system that can be used with a SIM card. When an accident occurs, a call can be sent manually or automatically made to a telephone call centre. Knowing the geographic location, the vehicle identity and the possibility of a direct communication with the people involved enables the nearest emergency services to be called out. In this context, the LAB / CEESAR have set up a study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of this system. The purpose of this paper is to detail the E-call system evaluation method of effectiveness used and give a global synthesis of the results.
Analysis of the accident scenario of powered two-wheelers on the basis of real-world accidents
(2013)
For the first time since 20 years the German national statistics of traffic accidents revealed an increasing number of fatalities and seriously injured persons in 2011. This negative development was especially caused by increasing numbers in all groups of vulnerable road users (VRU). Furthermore, the comparison of fatality reduction rates between several categories of road users shows that persons on motorcycles show the worst performance over years. Although every second fatality in German traffic accidents is still a car occupant, users of PTW make up more than 20% in the meantime. Assuming further improvements in the field of occupant protection this trend will continue. For that reason, a study on the basis of real-world accidents was conducted to describe the accident scenario involving motorcycles and to identify the reasons of the above-described fact. Approximately 1.800 motorcycle accidents out of GIDAS database were used for the analyses. The first part of the study deals with the question how representative the GIDAS database is for the German motorcycle accident scenario. Afterwards, detailed descriptive statistics on motorcycle accidents were presented considering numerous parameters about the accident scene, environmental influences, vehicle information, individual characteristics, interview data, injury severity and injury causation. One important point is the identification of the most frequent critical situations that are typical for motorcycle accidents. Furthermore, a special focus was on accident causation. Finally, conspicuous facts out of the analysis are emphasized. All in all, the study gives a comprehensive overview about the German motorcycle accident scenario. One the one hand, the use of weighted GIDAS data allows representative and robust statements on the basis of large case numbers; on the other hand highly detailed conclusions can be drawn. The results of the study help to understand the particularities of motorcycle accidents and provide approaches for further improvements in the field of PTW safety.
The overall purpose of the ASSESS project is to develop a relevant and standardised set of test and assessment methods and associated tools for integrated vehicle safety systems, primarily focussing on currently available pre-crash sensing systems. The first stage of the project was to define casualty relevant accident scenarios so that the test scenarios will be developed based on accident scenarios which currently result in the greatest injury outcome, measured by a combination of casualty severity and casualty frequency. The first analysis stage was completed using data from a range of accident databases, including those which were nationally representative (STATS19, UK and STRADA, SE) and in-depth sources which provided more detailed parameters to characterise the accident scenarios (GIDAS, DE and OTS, UK). A common analysis method was developed in order to compare the data from these different sources, and while the data sets were not completely compatible, the majority of the data was aligned in such a way that allowed a useful comparison to be made. As the ASSESS project focuses on pre-crash sensing systems fitted to passenger cars, the data selected for the analysis was "injury accidents which involved at least one passenger car". The accident data analysis yielded the following ranked list of most relevant accident scenarios: Rank Accident scenario 1 Driving accident - single vehicle loss of control 2 Accidents in longitudinal traffic (same and opposite directions) 3 Accidents with turning vehicle(s) or crossing paths in junctions 4 Accidents involving pedestrians The ranked list highlights the relatively large role played by "accidents in longitudinal traffic", and "accidents with turning vehicle(s) or crossing paths in junctions" (the second and third most prevalent accident scenarios, respectively). The pre-crash systems addressed in ASSESS propose to yield beneficial safety outcomes with specific regard to these accident scenarios. This indicates that the ASSESS project is highly relevant to the current casualty crash problem. In the second stage of the analysis a selection of these accident scenarios were analysed further to define the accident parameters at a more detailed level .This paper describes the analysis approach and results from the first analysis stage.
In general the passive safety capability is much greater in newer versus older cars due to the stiff compartment preventing intrusion in severe collisions. However, the stiffer structure which increases the deceleration can lead to a change in injury patterns. In order to analyse possible injury mechanisms for thoracic and lumbar spine injuries, data from the German Inâ€Depth Accident Study (GIDAS) were used in this study. A twoâ€step approach of statistical and caseâ€byâ€case analysis was applied for this investigation. In total 4,289 collisions were selected involving 8,844 vehicles, 5,765 injured persons and 9,468 coded injuries. Thoracic and lumbar spine injuries such as burst, compression or dislocation fractures as well as soft tissue injuries were found to occur in frontal impacts even without intrusion to the passenger compartment. If a MAIS 2+ injury occurred, in 15% of the cases a thoracic and/or lumbar spine injury is included. Considering AIS 2+ thoracic and lumbar spine, most injuries were fractures and occurred in the lumbar spine area. From the case by case analyses it can be concluded that lumbar spine fractures occur in accidents without the engagement of longitudinals, lateral loading to the occupant and/or very severe accidents with MAIS being much higher than the spine AIS.
While accident statistics on a national level are provided by many countries, there is a need for international data that includes more detailed information about the accident, so called in-depth data. As a consequence, accident data projects have been emerging in different regions of the world. This creates a need for comparable and mergeable data from different countries, enabling the use of already existing accident data resources and helping to expedite the improvement of global road safety. While existing approaches focus that mostly on building a comprehensive accident database from scratch, the iGLAD project (Initiative for the Global Harmonization of Accident Data) attempts a more pragmatic approach by building on top of the work already accomplished in this area and complementing it. The target of iGLAD is to help setting up an additional dataset as a compatibility layer between already existing world wide data sets and integrating the structure of these by defining a common data scheme. This dataset is limited to the common denominator between the existing data sets and is inherently rather small and simple. Eventually, an individual converter for each participating accident investigation group will be built that enables pooling all data sets in a common repository. This not only saves costs and time, and hence makes such a target more feasible, but also creates data that is usable right from the start. This paper gives an overview of the current status of iGLAD and first steps taken. Additionally, some methodological aspects are discussed, next to a glance at other projects working currently on related issues, providing additional input for iGLAD. Finally, an overview of next steps and intended future work is given.
Although ATV accidents account for numerous deaths in the US and Australia, the role in traffic accidents and hospital admissions in Germany is unknown. At a level I trauma centre, hospital and crash charts were analysed for medical and technical parameters of ATV accidents. ATV drivers were 0.1% of emergency trauma patients. The mean total hospital stayrnwas 15 days; there were 1.5 stays per patients with 2.0 surgical procedures needed. One patient died, only two recovered fully. 14 cases of ATV accidents out of 18990 (0.1%) were documented within 10 years. The mean impact velocity was 35 km/h. Car collisions were predominant. The upper extremity was the predominant injured region (AIS 0.7), Mean maximum AIS was 1.4. ATV accidents in Germany are rare but pose high risk for severe injuries. Possible reasons are low active and passive security, limited experience and risky driving behaviour. Preventive measures are discussed.rn
Für die rechnerische Dimensionierung der Betondecken im Oberbau von Verkehrsflächen für den Neubau sowie die Erneuerung nach RDO-Beton 09 ist die statische Spaltzugfestigkeit an der unteren beziehungsweise unteren und oberen Scheibe des Betonzylinders beziehungsweise Bohrkerns entsprechend der Vorgaben der AL Sp-Beton zu bestimmen. Aufgrund der unzureichenden Kenntnis der Präzision dieses Prüfverfahrens wurden mit einem breit aufgestellten Ringversuch die statistischen Kennwerte an Labor- und Bestandsbetonen unter Vergleichs- und Wiederholbedingungen auf der Grundlage des FGSV-Merkblatts über die statistische Auswertung von Prüfergebnissen ermittelt. Für eine möglichst gute statistische Absicherung nahmen an dem Ringversuch dreizehn erfahrene Prüfstellen teil. Zur Abdeckung des vielschichtigen Einsatzes des Prüfverfahrens erfolgte der Ringversuch an acht Prüflosen. Dabei berücksichtigen einerseits die Prüflose 1 und 2 mit den im Transportbetonwerk hergestellten Betonzylindern die Erst-/Eignungsprüfung und das darauf aufbauende Prüflos 3 mit Bohrkernen aus einer im Feldversuch hergestellten Fahrbahnplatte mit gleicher Betonrezeptur die Übereinstimmungskontrolle bei Neubaumaßnahmen. Andererseits findet der Einsatz des Prüfverfahrens bei der Restsubstanzbewertung von Betonfahrbahnplatten bei den Prüflosen 4 bis 7 mit den Bohrkernen aus vier in Waschbetonbauweise ausgeführten Fahrbahnplatten Berücksichtigung. Das zusätzlich aufgenommene Prüflos 8 mit einem Labormörtel dient der Herausarbeitung des Materialeinflusses auf die Präzision der Spaltzugfestigkeitsprüfung. Zusammenfassend kann festgestellt werden, dass die Präzision der in der AL Sp-Beton beschriebenen Spaltzugfestigkeitsprüfung mit einem Variationskoeffizienten von weniger als 10 % unter Wiederhol- und Vergleichsbedingungen hinreichend genau ist. Der geringe Unterschied zwischen den Variationskoeffizienten unter Wiederhol- und Vergleichsbedingungen lässt zusätzlich den Schluss zu, dass der Einfluss des unterschiedlichen Personals und der verschiedenartigen Prüftechniken bei den einzelnen Prüfstellen relativ gering ist. Die im Rahmen des Ringversuchs gewonnenen Erkenntnisse haben bereits partiell Eingang in die Normung gefunden.
It is well known that motorcycle riding is fascinating but quite more dangerous than for example car driving. In 2006, 5,091 persons were killed as victims of crashes occurring on public roads in Germany. 52% (2,683) were car occupants, 16% (793) motorcycle riders, 14% (711) pedestrians, 10% (486) bicycle riders, 5% (235) commercial vehicle occupants, 2% (107) riders of smaller powered two-wheelers, called "Mofa, Moped and Mokick". This shows that motorcycle riders recently are the second largest group of killed traffic participants in Germany. Latest information coming from the Federal Statistics predict for the year 2007 the figure of 4,958 killed road victims in total. This would be again a successful reduction (-133 killed persons or "2.6% compared to the year 2006). But the news coming from the Federal Statistics during the year 2007 and at the begin of 2008 did not always tell the same positive story. It is questioned whether the positive trend of substantially reduced figures of killed road user year by year will longer continue for Germany. That means it could be impossible to reach the ambitious target, set by the European Commission, to cut in half the figure of killed road users until the year 2010 " compared to the figure for the year 2001. It was reported that the group of 45 to 49 years old traffic participants (all traffic modes) is conspicuous with an increase of 30% up to 297 killed road users in total from January to August 2007. This increase can be ascribed in particular by an increase of killed motorcycle riders within this age group. Due to mild weather conditions in Germany in 2007 the season for motorcycle riding began relatively early and this may be a main reason for the increase of the figure of killed motorcycle riders by 16% from January to August 2007. With this background the accident occurrence of motorcycles became more and more essential. As part of the actual discussion about historical trends, recent emphases, causes and relevant structures of the events of motorcycle crashes it is evident, to have latest and carefully updated figures coming from both the Federal Statistics and In-depth studies. The paper will give a contribution to this using the German Federal Statistics and in-depth studies, for example GIDAS. Additional data coming from the DEKRA Motorcycle Accident Database as well as from literature are considered, too. The paper will help to describe the current situation of the accident involvement of motorcycles in Germany.
While many medical studies have dealt with the incidence, nature and treatment of polytrauma the injury-causing accident mechanisms are rarely discussed in detail, mostly due to the lack of documentation of the technical aspects. The present prospective study was started in late 2007 and collects data from traffic accidents with most severely injured in six south- German counties and two larger cities for the duration of one year. It is aimed at identifying and documenting all polytrauma cases (ISS ≥ 16) caused by traffic accidents and their crash circumstances. The data collection is based on an interdisciplinary concept to include both the police, emergency dispatch centers, hospitals and fire departments in the region and is completely anonymous. Potentially relevant cases where an emergency physician was called to the scene of a traffic accident are provided by the dispatch center. All three hospitals in the region suited for the treatment of polytraumatised patients record injuries, major diagnostic and surgery data. Data and images from the accident scene are provided by the police and by fire departments. The latter provide information which is usually not available from the police, like deployed airbags, vehicle extrication measures and detailed views of car interiors. The main objective of the study is to determine the structure of road users who sustain a polytrauma, their crash opponents and the injury patterns found in relation to the collision configuration and the protection by seat belts, air bags and other devices. With detailed documentation of vehicle damage and extrication measures the study is also intended to support the development of injury predictors for pre-hospital treatment and provide field data regarding further improvement of technical rescue.