Report on Accident Analysis, Deliverable 3.2.3 of the EC FP7 Project CASPER (2012)

This document reports on work undertaken in subtasks 3.2.2 (Focussed accident data collection) and 3.2.4 (Data analysis and reporting) of the EC CASPER (Child Advanced Safety Project for European Roads) project. There are two main objectives, to describe the information available from the road accident data collection activity of the CASPER project and its predecessors, CREST and CHILD, and to provide an analysis of the child accident data – within the constraints of the case selection criteria used. This work would not be possible without the contributions made to the road accident database by the participants in all three EC projects (CREST, CHILD and CASPER) – the data collection teams and sponsors of the data collection activities

Safety benefits of the new ECE regulation for the homologation of CRS – an estimation by the CASPER consortium

The GRSP informal group on child restraint systems (CRS) is finalising phase 1 of a new regulation for the homologation of CRS. This draft regulation is already the subject of several discussions concerning the safety benefits and the advantages and disadvantages that certain specific points may bring. However, these discussions are sometimes not based on scientific facts and do not consider the whole package but only single items. Based on the experience of the CASPER partners in the fields of human behaviour, accident analysis, test procedures and biomechanics in the area of child safety a consideration of the safety benefits of the proposal for phase 1 and recommendations for phase 2 will be given

Assessment of solutions to improve the restraint conditions of children in vehicles [Deliverable 4.6 of the EC FP7 Project CASPER]

The purpose of this report was to provide applications and research results for the improvement of child protection systems. As well as considering the effect any CRS improvements would have on policies or any legislation that would need to be created or improved. The issue of cost and subsidies for child restraints is considered. Research on the effectiveness of interventions is reported and recommendations on future policies are made. Results from the sociological survey carried out as part of the CASPER project proved to be an extremely valuable resource as many of the proposed solutions are based on information gathered in the survey. As child safety is of global importance the CASPER project gathered data relevant to child safety laws and regulations from a large array of countries this data is displayed in this report. Recent statistics show that a large percentage of CRS are misused, this project aims to reduce this figure by implementing innovative designs and creating new legislation. To list some of the ways CRS are being misused: they are being incorrectly installed i.e. putting a rearward facing device in a forward facing position or incorrectly fastening the seatbelt to the device. Parents play a key role in child safety and this is researched in great depth within this project. Research was carried out in to ways of preventing these types of CRS misuse as well as researching other problems with CRS such as the issue with transporting children with disabilities. The proposed solutions are presented alongside any issues that might occur. One of the key areas of CRS improvement is Car-to-CRS communication, this ties in with integrated CRS as the idea is to make CRS fully homologated for the car. ISOFIX involves having anchors built into the car which CRS can fix onto. The next step is to develop Car-to-CRS communication so that the CRS can benefit from the cars safety features. Car manufacturers can also build CRS directly into the car creating integrated CRS which are also considered in this document. At the moment CRS are predominantly used in cars, however they could also be used in aeroplanes, trains and busses. Although they would have to be optimised for each of the different situations, for example the CRS for aeroplanes would focus more on preventing injuries caused by turbulence than crashing. During this project the CASPER consortium investigated and evaluated the systems which are currently available or currently being developed. This was done by analysing the demands and applications in terms of research, development and approval of CRS for child protection

CASPER: focus on some specific technical points through field studies and test data

During the 3 years of the EU research project CASPER (FP7 GA n° 18564), partners have combined their expertise in the different fields of child safety in cars to reach the main objectives of the project: improvement of the rate of correctly restrained children and improvement of the performance of child restraint systems (CRS) through the definition of better tools and criteria for the evaluation of their protection level. Through numerous collaborations and participation to working groups, the CASPER consortium has been one of the actors in the European area of child safety. A large amount of data has been collected, analyzed and disseminated according to the needs of the different groups, and some have already been included in the proposal for the text of the new regulation. This paper intends to make an transversal analysis of some specific items through the data available in the different tasks of the project, such as child safety and airbags (frontal, side, curtains), situation of ISOFIX systems, protection of the abdomen and analyse of specific systems such as shield systems or seatbelt adjusters. A larger focus will be made on items that have not yet been presented during the dissemination workshops of the CASPER project or for which complementary information has been made available