In Germany averagely two million traffic accidents happen each year and emergency medical services are called to more than 400 000 patients. Even though this number is decreasing continuously (due to improvements in the fields of vehicle safety, road construction, and accident prevention) every case is yet a challenge for the rescuers and requires improvements in emergency medicine as well. Especially during diagnostics right at the accident scene, there are only limited instruments available to gain the necessary knowledge of the injuries suffered, to come to essential decisions about treatment or transport. To provide an additional diagnostic aid by scouting and estimating the situation, a software-tool calculating the likeliness of the most frequent severe injuries (AIS 3-6) of front occupants in passenger cars has been developed to deliver this necessary information about particular accident scenarios. To achieve this, logistic likelihood functions have been calculated in a multivariate regression analysis analysing all AIS 3+ injuries in the GIDAS database of the years 1999-2006 that happened more than four times
Each year the traffic accident research teams in Dresden and Hanover provide an in-depth investigation of approximately two thousand accidents, aggregated in the GIDAS database. To accomplish a comprehensive review of each traffic accident recorded, a sensible and thorough encoding of suffered injuries is indispensable. The Abbreviated Injury Scale by AAAM offers a valuable and handy solution to achieve this goal. However, there were a few difficulties in the use of the AIS that came up in the past, which let to necessary improvements for the utilization of the AIS 2005 for GIDAS.
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.
Still correlated with high mortality rates in traffic accidents traumatic aortic ruptures were frequently detected in unprotected car occupants in the early years. This biomechanical analysis investigates the different kinds of injury mechanisms leading to traumatic aortic injuries in todays traffic accidents and how the way of traffic participation affects the frequency of those injuries over the years. Based on GIDAS reported traffic accidents from 1973 to 2014 are analyzed. Results show that traumatic aortic injuries are mainly observed in high-speed accidents with high body deceleration and direct load force to the chest. Mostly chest compression is responsible for the load direction to the cardiac vessels. The main observed load vector is from caudal-ventral and from ventral solely, but also force impact from left and right side and in roll-over events with chest compression lead to traumatic aortic injuries. Classically, the injury appeares at the junction between the well-fixed aortic arch and the pars decendens following a kind of a scoop mechanism, a few cases with a hyperflexion mechanism are also described. In our analysis the deceleration effect alone never led to an aortic rupture. Comparing the past 40 years aortic injuries shift from unprotected car occupants to today's unprotected vulnerable road users like pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. Still the accident characteristics are linked with chest compression force under high speed impact, no seatbelt and direct body impact.
Ruptures and dissections of the thoracic and abdominal aortic vessel caused by traffic accidents are rare but potentially life-threatening injuries. They can occur by blunt trauma via seat belt or dashboard injury. The study aimed at evaluating the overall mortality, morbidity, neurological disorders, and differences in operative procedures of open repair and stenting. It shows that, with a change and improvement in diagnostic tools and surgical approach, mortality and morbidity of blunt aortic injuries were significantly reduced. Still an immediate life-threatening injury early diagnosis via multiple-slice and scans and surgical repair with minimally invasive stents showed excellent short-time results for selected patients.
The head impact of pedestrians in the windscreen area shows a high relevance in real-world accidents. Nevertheless, there are neither biomechanical limits nor elaborated testing procedures available. Furthermore, the development of deployable protection systems like pop-up bonnets or external airbags has made faster progress than the corresponding testing methods. New requirements which are currently not considered are taken into account within a research project of BASt and the EC funded APROSYS (Advanced PROtection SYStems) integrated project relating to passive pedestrian protection. Testing procedures for head impact in the windscreen area should address these new boundary conditions. The presented modular procedure combines the advantages of virtual testing, including full-scale multi-body and finite element simulations, as well as hardware testing containing impactor tests based on the existing procedures of EEVC WG 17. To meet the efforts of harmonization in legislation, it refers to the Global Technical Regulation of UNECE (GTR No. 9). The basis for this combined hardware and virtual testing procedure is a robust categorization covering all passenger cars and light commercial vehicles and defining the testing zone including the related kinematics. The virtual testing part supports also the choice of the impact points for the hardware test and determines head impact timing for testing deployable systems. The assessment of the neck rotation angle and sharp edge contact in the rear gap of pop-up bonnets is included. For the demonstration of this procedure, a hardware sedan shaped vehicle was modified by integrating an airbag system. In addition, tests with the Honda Polar-II Dummy were performed for an evaluation of the new testing procedure. Comparing these results, it was concluded that a combination of simulation and updated subsystem tests forms an important step towards enhanced future pedestrian safety systems considering the windscreen area and the deployable systems.
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).
Im September 2013 wurde der 2. CEDR Call (Conference of European Directors of Roads, Call 2013), der eine Summe von ca. 5,3 Mio Euro umfasst, veröffentlicht. Im Rahmen der länderübergreifen europäischen Forschung waren fünf Themen der künftigen strategischen Forschungsplanung und dem anstehenden Forschungsbedarf durch Befragung der europäischen nationalen Straßenbauverwaltungen identifiziert worden: Energieeffizienz, Verkehrssicherheit, Alternde Infrastruktur, Straßen und Umwelt, Verkehrsmanagement. Im Rahmen von Workshops waren zuvor zu diesen fünf Themen "Descriptions of Research Needs" (DoRNs) erarbeitet worden, welche zusammen mit dem Call veröffentlicht wurden. Die wesentlichen Inhalte der DoRNS werden im Beitrag kurz beschrieben.
Wetterbeobachtungen zeigen, dass sich das Klima in den letzten Dekaden gewandelt hat. Unter ökonomischen und unter strategischen Gesichtspunkten bedeutsam ist die zukünftige Entwicklung von extremen Wetterereignissen wie Starkniederschlägen, Hitzewellen oder Überschwemmungen. Die wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen eines vermuteten menschlichen Einflusses auf das Klima analysiert seit 1988 der "Zwischenstaatliche Ausschuss zum Klimawandel" (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC). Vom IPCC werden unter anderem Projektionen von möglichen zukünftigen Klimaentwicklungen erstellt. Um spezielle Regionen detaillierter zu untersuchen und eine Brücke zwischen globalen Klimaänderungen und lokalen Konsequenzen zu schlagen, werden regionale Klimamodelle verwendet. In der BASt wurde 2009 eine Arbeitsgruppe "Klima" eingerichtet, die eine Risiko-Identifikation in verschiedenen Bereichen der Straßeninfrastruktur und des Straßenverkehrs durchführt. Ziel dieser Arbeitsgruppe ist die Minderung der Verwundbarkeit gegenüber den Folgen des Klimawandels durch die Identifikation regionaler und lokaler Schwachstellen und deren Zusammenführung mit dem Bundesfernstraßennetz. In einem von mehreren Pilotprojekten werden die Risiken von Hang- und Böschungsrutschungen durch die Zunahme von Extremwetterereignissen abgeschätzt. Fernziel ist die Erstellung eines Risikokatasters zur Identifizierung der durch Hangrutschungen besonders gefährdeten Bereiche des Bundesfernstraßennetzes.
Für den Einsatz im Erdbau des Straßenbaus müssen die eingesetzten Geokunststoffe hohen Qualitätsansprüchen genügen. Das Straßenbauregelwerk ist durch die Veröffentlichung der "Zusätzlichen Technischen Vertragsbedingungen und Richtlinien für Erdarbeiten im Straßenbau" (ZTV E-StB 09) in dieser Hinsicht nun vollständig, so dass eine lückenlose Nachverfolgung der Produkte von der Herstellung über die Lieferung bis zum Einbau möglich ist. Wichtig ist jedoch die Einhaltung der Vorschriften und Anforderungen, angefangen beim Hersteller über den Lieferanten, über den Auftragnehmer bis hin zum Auftraggeber, um einen hohen Qualitätsstandard des Produktes und der fertigen Leistung zu garantieren. Hersteller, deren Produkte einer freiwilligen Überwachung unterliegen, können diese Produkte mit einem Qualitätssiegel kennzeichnen und liefern zusammen mit der CE-Kennzeichnung ein Produktzertifikat. Da in diesem Fall auf die Baustoffeingangsprüfung verzichtet werden kann, reduziert sich der finanzielle und zeitliche Prüfaufwand und es wird ein reibungsloser Bauablauf erzielt.