Collisions of heavy trucks against cars, two-wheelers and pedestrians

Walz, Felix H.; Snub, Claudio; Baumann, Ulrich; Marty, Walter

Affiliations

¹Institute of Forensic Medicine, University of Zurich, Zurichbergstr 8, CH - 8028 ZURICH

Abstract

Collisions of heavy trucks with cars, two-wheelers and pedestrians are analyzed with regard to their frequency, their injury potential and collision mechanisms. 129 crashes of trucks with other four-wheelvehicles (totally 163 injured occupants and 247 vehicles) were analyzed in detail. The most dangerous impact configuration was truck-front to car-front; therefore deformable underrun protection elements in thefront would have a much higher injury reduction potential for car occupants than the classical rear underrun protection bars: the mean ISS for car occupants (13,5) was highest for front to front impacts and relatively low for car-front to truck-rear impacts (mean ISS 4).

If involved in a collision, the fatality risk for truck occupants was as low as 0.17% whereas it was 0.45% for car occupants (all collisions types), i.e. 2.5 times higher. Truck occupants had injuries of MAIS 3 and more only in single uuck crashes and truck-truck impacts.

Another sample discussed contains 87 collisions of trucks against two wheelers or pedestrians. As s to the frequency and injury severity (sum of ISS values) thefront of the tmck was most hazardous for pedestrians and motorcycle users, the feft truck side for oncomming motorcycles and the tight side was the most frequent and dangerous impact location for bicycles and mopeds. Predominantly head and lower extremities were injured often and severely.

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Cited By (2)

Year	Entry
1995	Scott AW, Hassan AM, Gillam TJ, Mackay M. Car and truck collisions revisited. In: Proceedings of the 1995 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact. September 13-15, 1995; Brunnen, Switzerland.365-374.
2001	Yen PT, Radin Umar RS, Azhar AA. Relative risk of fatal injury in "high-performance-small-motorcycle" crashes in Malaysia. J Crash Prev Injury Control. 2001;2(4):307-315.