CHILD ADVANCED SAFETY PROJECT FOR EUROPEAN ROADS Road Accident Data Alan Kirk - Loughborough University UK COVER Workshop November 29th/30th Munich, Germany
Introduction Activity is continuing in data collection and analysis is ongoing But this important activity feeds real world road accident data into CASPER activities Therefore useful to present a summary of the methodology
What are we doing.. Collecting detailed real world road accident cases with restrained children In a systematic and rigorous process that draws on a collective group experience (all teams familiar with subject and methodology) Why? Provide data that are essential to improve or to develop crash test dummies and models and to obtain injury criteria - source of real-world data Analysis of investigations leads to proposed test procedures that are closer to the real traveling conditions of children than the test bench currently used for the approval of CRS (this knowledge integrated in proposed solutions)
How. 6 teams collecting data Loughborough University, UK LAB, France PSA and RENAULT FIAT (ELASIS), Italy Applus+ IDIADA, Spain Medical University Hanover, Germany Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany Distribution between countries depends on local factors e.g. use rates Each team creates case summary - reviewed by Task partners for quality and interest to the project Combined experience of the group adds to the case with comments during review, for example; regarding injury mechanisms, misuse situations, crash severity from previous experiences Some have PC Crash simulations
In-depth Information - Methodology Full cases include: photographs vehicle damage information estimate of crash severity (deltav EES) injury information (coded to AIS 1998) occupant data age / gender / position / height / weight restraint data (type, misuse, damage) Needed for good quality reconstructions and simulation Case Selection to support scientific aims of CASPER, criteria are in place; more severe road accidents in terms of injury severity cases high in crash severity with minor injury
At least one child up to and including 13 years old (but 13 yr old must be 150 cm and weight will be considered) NO, REJECT CASPER Case Selection Criteria (v2) Car-to-vehicle or car-to-fixed-obstacle accidents are considered. Case vehicles are passenger cars (or car derived small vans) designed up to 9 occupants. MPVs (e.g. Galaxy) are included but not large vans / minibuses with seats (e.g. Transit or VW Transporter) NO, REJECT Correctly restrained in a child restraint system (CRS) or adult seat belt. NO Well defined Cases with misuse of CRS, such as inappropriate type of restraint according to the weight and size of the child, or incorrect fitting of the restraint into the vehicle, slack in harness or seatbelt, is included if the conditions of the misuse are well defined and possible to reproduce in a test of reconstruction. Not defined, REJECT The child or another restrained occupant is seriously (AIS 2) injured. Should stay away from cases where AIS 2 concussion is only serious injury NO Frontal or lateral or rear impact NO Simplified FOR CONSIDERATION Lateral impact: The intrusion on the passenger compartment has to be more than 200 mm, even if a child restrained on the struck side receives no CHILD relevant injury (AIS 0 or AIS 1). Booster cushion and adult seat belt or if the child is only restrained by an adult seatbelt, has to be seated on the struck side. Rear Impact: Crash severity criteria still to be defined. NO, REJECT Frontal Impact: Delta v minimum of 40 km/h. Multiple collisions and roll-overs can be selected only if the injuries are related to a single impact (frontal, lateral or rear) or, if no injury, high severity Under-run. Must be involvement of frontal structure, or, if no injury, high severity Glance off / small overlap. NO, REJECT POSSIBLE, FOR CONSIDERATION CRS with a shell, there is no importance of the place, even if there is not direct intrusion on that place. FOR CONSIDERATION
Summary of Case Selection Criteria CASPER At least one child up to and including the age of 13 years Car-to-vehicle or car-to-fixed-obstacle accidents are considered Case vehicles are passenger vehicles for up to 9 occupants Correctly restrained in a child restraint system (CRS) or adult seat belt Cases with misuse are included if the conditions of the misuse are well defined and possible to reproduce in a reconstruction test
Summary of Case Selection Criteria cont.. CASPER Frontal, lateral or rear impact (not just rollover) The child or another restrained occupant has at least an AIS 2 injury (AIS 2 concussion not included), and if not: a frontal impact must have a Delta V of at least 40 kph a side impact must have at least 200mm of intrusion rear impacts reviewed on a case by case basis As a consequence the data held in the CASPER Accident Database are NOT representative of the real world accident and injury situation regarding children in Europe They are focused on the scientific aims of the project
But the database does allow us to evaluate the situations where children are still getting injured It can be used to give an indication of which body regions are being injured in different CRS types or for different ages of children The detailed database enables us examine and cross tabulate such things as: Direction and severity of impacts (EES and deformation); Impact configurations (car to vehicle, single vehicle); Injury and impact type; Injury distribution (fatality, serious, slight or by AIS); Distribution of restraint types by age; Age by impact; Seating position; Misuse and inappropriate use
Current Database Status Database holds 669 cases from previous projects (CREST/CHILD) 68 CASPER cases selected for database inclusion so far Currently 737cases Analysis tasks in CASPER still to come Detailed database - analysis can go in many different directions (by impact, body region, age, restraint type etc) Overview today to show current overall numbers and distribution of age impact/restraint condition Brief look at some body region distributions
Inappropriate Use and Misuse Wanted to mention as not explored in the analysis today But as we will see in other presentations it is an important aspect of child safety and the work in CASPER and will feature when reporting the data at the end of the project Misuse can be difficult to find in investigations the priority is to remove the child for medical treatment as soon as possible But the experience of the group allows misuse injury patterns to be identified and real world circumstances are spotted e.g. high harness straps on Group 1 seats that have recently been handed down from an older sibling Even so we know that the levels of misuse that we can report in the database are lower than the actual levels CASPER cases so far: 21% misuse identified
Future data analysis and reporting Analyse and report main results by crash configuration and restraint type, (injury mechanisms, injury outcome and the levels of misuse seen) Examination of crash severity and misuse conditions Cases with new restraint and car technologies, along with cases of special interest (e.g. injury from a DVD accessory or airbag interaction) Comparison of AIS 90, 98 and 2005 coding systems Status and contents of the database (e.g. nationality distribution)
Conclusion CASPER The resource available for supplying data on injury criteria, injury mechanisms and child kinematics is large, currently with 737 accident cases involving over 1000 restrained children Once data is disaggregated by age, restraint type, impact severity and body region of course the numbers are reduced, but such a large dataset helps to offset this This has been a brief presentation that only touches on the information that we have in the CASPER database and the analysis we are able to carry out
Acknowledgements The partners wish to acknowledge all the CREST/CHILD and CASPER data collection teams and their sponsors from all the countries involved in this work The UK Loughborough cases include accident data from the United Kingdom Co-operative Crash Injury Study. CCIS was managed by TRL Ltd on behalf of the Department for Transport (Transport Technology and Standards Division) who fund the project with Autoliv, Ford Motor Company, Nissan Motor Europe and Toyota Motor Europe. The data were collected by teams from the Birmingham Automotive Safety Centre of the University of Birmingham, the Vehicle Safety Research Centre at Loughborough University, and the Vehicle & Operator Services Agency of the Department for Transport.
Thank you Alan Kirk Research Fellow a.r.kirk@lboro.ac.uk Transport Safety Research Centre Loughborough Design School Loughborough University Leicestershire LE11 3TU United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)1509 226900 www.vsrc.org.uk