Each year in the European Union approximately 17000 vulnerable road users are killed as the result of being struck by a motor vehicle, that is 7000 pedestrians, 3000 bicyclists and 7000 motorcyclists, about 1/3 of the total road traffic deaths. In addition to this, an estimated further five hundred thousand vulnerable road users are injured through vehicle impacts every year, impacted by a car or truck front or side. Much research has been done in Europe, US and Japan in the past to investigate the causes of injuries and the biomechanical mechanisms of impacts in road accidents and it is the task to summarise the existing work to find solutions and measures for injury reduction. Obviously countermeasures can be found on different fields of technique and vehicle design, medicine and treatment and psychology and road infrastructure development, but finding the right focus of safety strategies the interaction between driver behaviour and accident event, vehicle movement and injury occurrence is important to understand. The methodology of accident analysis should be used for finding injury mechanisms. The presentation will give an overview of existing interdisciplinary research, include accident and injury statistics and will follow with recommendations for future research. The frequencies and injury severities of different vu1nerab1e road users will be shown for major collision situations and the characteristics of injury mechanisms will be described. (Author/publisher)
Abstract