Kinematics and injury pattern in rollover accidents of cars in German road traffic – an in-depth-analysis by GIDAS

Abstract

This paper describes the injury pattern of car occupants in rollover crashes by type, location and severity AIS. The accident cases were collected randomly within GIDAS (German In-Depth-Accident Study) at Hannover. Since 1999 in Germany a joint project between FAT (Forschungsvereinigung Automobiltechnik or Automotive Industry Research Association) and BASt (Bundesanstalt für Straßenwesen or the Federal Road Research Institute) is being carried out in Hannover and Dresden. The paper describes the methodology of this project with statistically orientated procedure of data sampling (sampling plan, weighting factors) on one hand and describes the results of the offered title on the other hand. The portion of rollovers can be established at 3.7% of all accidents with casualties in the year 2000. For the study 434 cases of car accidents with rollovers are used for a detail comprehensive analysis. The accidents happened in the years 1994 to 2000 in the Hannover area. The injury distribution will report about 741 occupants with rollover accident event. The presented paper will give an overview of the accident situations following in rollover movements of cars. The distributions of injury frequencies, injury severity AIS for the whole body and for the body regions of occupants will be presented and compared to technical details like the impact speed and the deformation pattern. The speed of the car was determined at the point of rollover and on the point of accident initiency. The characteristics of the kinematics followed in a rollover movement are analyzed and the major defined types of rollover will be shown in the paper. The possibilities of In-Depth-Investigation methods for the approach of finding countermeasures against rollover and explaining the biomechanics of injuries in rollover are shown in the paper as well.