A rupture of the aorta was a common injury observed in the 1960s and 1970s among unprotected car occupants, being reported in 10–15% of traffic accident fatalities. Based on in‐depth accident cases from the German‐In‐Depth‐Accident‐Study (GIDAS), a representative sample of all traffic accidents over a 40‐year period (1973–2014) was available with more than 100.000 involved persons and those cases with aortic ruptures AR (n=142) were analyzed in detail to identify changes over time with regard to different kinds of traffic participation and injury mechanisms. Aortic rupture is often observed in high‐speed accidents with high body deceleration and direct load to the thorax. In nearly all cases a high compression of the thorax is responsible for the load to the heart vessel. The study found load resulting in most cases from caudal‐ventral (26.1%), but also from ventral (21.1%), followed by load from the left and the right side (19.7% each) and 7.5% from run‐over events of vehicles with high thorax compression. The classical rupture site was on the area of the aortic arch into pars descendens. In today’s accident statistics (1995‐2014), aortic rupture is very seldom reported for car occupants (0.08%) or cyclists (0.04%), and is just slightly more frequent for pedestrians (0.21%) and motorcyclists (0.24%).