As a part of the Swedish ESV programme ''Steerability during emergency braking'' is this report an analysis of all traffic accidents in a certain police district during 1971, where all locked wheel accidents have been specially studied. All police reports concerning car accidents during 1971 in Sweden's Alingsas-Boras police district were studied and accidents where locked wheels were reported were analyzed to aid in determining: typical accident situations where steerability during braking would have prevented or reduced the consequences of an accident; the proportion of the total number of accidents in which locked wheels are a factor; and the need of steering capability during emergency braking. Of the 1,603 reported accidents, 168 (10.5%) were locked wheel accidents. Accident statistics and descriptions of the most frequent types of locked wheel accidents are presented. The possibility of avoiding the accident by using the steering wheel, if the vehicle had been equipped with an antiskid device, was determined by the investigator's subjective judgment and termed prevention. Good prevention was predicted for 70.8% of the accidents, and in 40% of the locked wheel accidents, the driver attempted to steer when the prevention was good. The coding system used in processing the accident data is included.
Abstract