Measurements of accident severity in real life accidents are often based on the crush energy of the studied vehicle. It is, however, important that the accident severity measurement is independent of the behaviour of the vehicle in the crash phase in an accident. In Sweden, more than 60,000 cars have been equipped with a crash recorder aimed at measuring the crash pulse in real life frontal collisions. This study shows results in terms of acceleration pulses and change of velocities measured with a crash recorder called Crash Pulse Recorder. The car fleet has been followed over 3 years, and in that time around 300 accidents have been collected. The accidents have been studied in detail, and apart from the crash recorder information, deformation measurements made with photogrammetric technique, interior inspection with video cameras and detailed medical information of the injuries have been analysed. Especially, accident severity distribution and injury risk versus accident severity is presented and discussed. (A)
Abstract