'Whiplash' injuries are a common cause of road traffic accident (RTA) related morbidity. However, few epidemiological studies have investigated risk factors associated with the occurrence of such injuries. The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between vehicle and occupant factors and the incidence of 'whiplash' in drivers with recent experience of a rear-end impact in an RTA. A...

Work zones in the United States have approximately 700 traffic-related fatalities, 24,000 injury crashes, and 52,000 non-injury crashes every year. Due to future highway reconstruction needs, work zones are likely to increase in number, duration, and length. This study focuses on analyzing the effect of work zone duration mainly due to its policy-sensitivity. To do so, we created a unique datas...

OBJECTIVE Traumatic rupture of thoracic aorta (TRA) was reported in the literature to be a major cause of death in motor vehicle crashes. This study aims at evaluating the most relevant risk factors of TRA. It also aims at analyzing the types of TRA as a function of car crash conditions and rib cage fractures. METHODS In-depth crash data collected from 1998 to 2006 as part of the Co-operative...

The following report contains information about a proposed technology by the authors, which consists of a device that sits inside of a vehicle and constantly monitors the car’s information. It can determine speed, g-force, and location coordinates. Using these data, the device can detect a car crash or pothole on the road. The data collected from the car is forwarded to a server to for more in-...

Lower limbs are normally the first contacted body region during car-pedestrian accidents, and easily suffer serious injuries. The previous tibia bending tolerances for pedestrian safety were mainly developed from three-point bending tests on tibia mid-shaft. The tibia tolerances of other locations are still not investigated enough. In addition, tibia loading condition under the car-pedestrian i...

Networking of active and passive safety systems is the fundamental basis for comprehensive vehicle safety. Situation-relevant information relating to driver reactions, vehicle behavior and nearfield traffic environment are fed into a crash probability calculator, which continually assesses the current crash risk and intervenes when necessary with appropriate measures to avoid a crash and reduce...

The purpose of this study was to estimate the burden of road traffic injury due to alcohol consumption by someone other than the injured party. We estimated the number and proportion of these traffic deaths and non-fatal traffic injuries, and the associated social costs, for a five-year period (2003-2007) in New Zealand. We found that more than 40% of alcohol-related crash injuries in New Zeala...

This study aimed to investigate the correlation of different impact conditions to the injury severity and impact biomechanics of pedestrians in real world accidents, and study the tolerance level with focus on head-brain of adults and children via indepth analysis and reconstructions of real world accidents. For this purpose, 188 pedestrian accident cases were selected from existing accident da...

The European crash test program, Euro NCAP, has since it’s launch presented results of some 80 individual car models. The improvements in the general level of protection have been substantial. While the intention of the test program is to stimulate the use of best practice, and not to predict real life outcome, it is nevertheless important to validate the positive development, and to pinpoint p...