Samenvatting
The circumstances in which children aged less than 10 travelling in passenger cars are severely injured or killed are different from the circumstances in the case of adults. The knowledge in this field of safety is very limited at present, because it is hard to collect a large sample of severe accidents involving children. This paper uses police reports on fatal crashes occurring in France in 1990, concerning 417 casualties aged less than 10, one quarter of whom were killed. On the basis of these reports, it is proposed to define the characteristics of these crashes by analyzing the following parameters: (1) child transportation conditions; (2) crash circumstances; and (3) restraining systems. (A)