Some injury scaling issues in UK crash research

This study explores the relationships between the classification of traffic casualties by the police and by using the AIS. It examines a sample of accidents to car occupants that have been studied through the CCIS data collection system in the UK. The results show that the police categories of ‘Slight’ and ‘Serious’ have poor correspondence with AIS rankings of the same individuals. In particular the ‘Serious’ police category includes a third of casualties who have either AIS 1or no injuries at all. The implications of these results on estimates of national casualties and costs are discussed. Some data from the EU indicate major variations in definitions of casualties from country to country making national comparisons uncertain

Future research directions in injury biomechanics and passive safety research

There has been an increasing trend within the safety environment for funding to be directed towards applied research or towards research developing commercially-exploitable systems. Funding mechanisms such as the EU’s 6th Framework Programme and many national programmes focus on research of likely immediate social benefit, reflecting the use of public finances. These programmes will continue to play an important role in funding safety research, but they typically do not have guidelines specifically directed towards fundamental research questions. Additionally, impartial advice is not always available to help programme managers identify research priorities. This review of biomechanics and passive safety research is intended for use by researchers who may be contemplating research in certain areas and wish independent guidance on specific research questions. It is also intended for use by research funding groups and programme managers who would like impartial guidance on basic research to be supported. It covers engineering research directed at improving vehicles and safety systems for all types of road user. It includes the main research and development tools such as dummy development and humanoid modelling and the important area of crash injury data

Head injuries in lateral impact collisions

Individual non-minor injuries (Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) > or = 2) to the head that occurred to belted and unbelted drivers and front seat passengers on the stuck side of impacted vehicles were examined. Injury type, injury combination, collision severity in relation to type of injury as well as contact sources were assessed. Forty-eight percent of injuries were moderate in severity (AIS 2). The most common type of injury was the diffuse brain injury, typically marked by a short period of unconsciousness, which occurred in collisions of lower severity than focal brain and skull fracture injuries. One-hundred and five out of 216 (48.6%) of contact sources for all injury types originated from outside the vehicle and such exterior sources were more likely to result in high severity injuries. Thirty percent of injuries resulted from head contacts with other vehicles. The most frequent vehicle interior contact source was the side window glass. Diffuse injuries tended to occur independently of other injury types and were more likely to originate from an interior rather than exterior contact. Preventative measures for head injury reduction in lateral collisions are discussed. Overall, the data show that proposed and present European and U.S. lateral impact test methods do not address many head injury problems such as those included in this study

The potential effectiveness of adaptive restraints

The potential effectiveness of adaptive restraint