Accidents of heavy goods vehicles (HGV) are regularly discussed, in particular because of the size and mass difference causing an increased risk potential for the accidental opponent. However, heavy goods vehicles are not separately coded within the accident recording of the police. Thus, information on accidents of these vehicles is not sufficiently available (within the regular publications of the Federal Statistical Office). Hence, the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) continues the analysis of accidents of these vehicles done in 2003 with this study to provide a comprehensive status report on accidents of heavy goods vehicles. The police records of an accident do not provide the possibility to distinguish heavy goods vehicles within the official statistics of road traffic accidents. However, additional data provided by the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) contains information that enables aggregating those vehicles. Therefore, the first work package includes a delimitation of these vehicles within the official statistic of road traffic accidents. Based on this classification, an analysis of the historic development of accidents with the involvement of heavy goods vehicles from 2002 to 2015 as well as the structure of accidents with those vehicles in 2015 will be examined. As this structure depends in particular on the type and kind of the accident, constellations are created from the intersections of type of accident and kind of accident. The majority of constellations is grouped into three scenarios that are examined in detail within the final work package. The result is a detailed analysis of characteristic features of accidents of heavy goods vehicles and the drivers involved. In 2015, heavy goods vehicles were involved in 11,261 accidents involving personal injuries. This corresponds to about 4 % of all accidents involving personal injury of this year within Germany. At those accidents, 15,635 persons were injured, this corresponds also to 4 % of all casualties in road accidents of this year. However, 524 people were killed in an accident involving at least one heavy goods vehicle, this gives 15 % of all persons killed in accidents. Accordingly, the severity of the accident with 350 killed or severely injured per 1,000 accidents with personal injuries is significantly higher than the average (233) of all accidents. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting