Rear end collisions. PENDANT Pan-European Co-ordinated Accident and Injury Databases, Workpackage 2 - Development and analysis of in-depth crash injury database for car occupants and pedestrians, Analysis as part of Deliverable D11, Appendix 4.

Rear end impacts are a common collision type in the PENDANT database. More than 200 of the cars in the database had an impact on the rear end of the vehicle. In spite of this almost all safety systems are developed for frontal and side collisions. The reason for this might be that very few rear end collisions are serious or fatal. However, less severe accidents and resulting minor injuries might still cause major suffering for the individual’s involved and large costs for the society and for that reason such injuries are an important subset. The aim of this study is to get a good overview of the rear-end accidents in the database and to point out the direction for further work. The main areas studied are impact configuration, injuries and injury causation. (Author/publisher)