What happens on the road before fatal car crashes?

Thomas, Christian; Perron, Thierry; Le Coz, Jean-Yves; Aguade, Veronique

Affiliations

¹Laboratory of Accidentology and Biomechanics, PSA Peugeot-Citroën/RENAULT, Nanterre, France

²Foundation of Mutuelle Assurance des Instituteurs de France, Niort, France

Abstract

Opportunities offered by advanced technology to address collision avoidance are rapidly becoming a major focus of highway safety research. The understanding of the traffic situations in which collisions occur is needed to guide this research towards effective applications. This paper focuses on the most frequent car fatal precrash scenarios in terms of car kinematics. A typology containing 74 of these scenarios was developed which includes the number of vehicles involved, road characteristics and car trajectories. This typology is applied to 4,298 fatal car occupant crash police reports recorded over one year in France. 74% of cases are related to the failure of the driver in his/her interaction with the road infrastructure and 24% in his/her interaction with the traffic. Results on yawing rate and driver perception and reaction in these circumstances are also given.

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Cited By (4)

Year	Entry
1998	Perron T, Chevennement J, Damville A, Mautuit C, Thomas C, Le Coz J-Y. Pilot study of accident scenarios on a driving simulator. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 31–June 4, 1998; Windsor, Ontario, Canada.374-385.
2001	Perron T, Kassaagi M, Brissart G. Active safety experiments with common drivers for the specification of active safety systems. In: Proceedings of the 17th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 4-7, 2001; Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
2007	Good CA. Biomechanics of Occupant Loading by Pre-Crash Motorized Shoulder Belt Tensioning [PhD thesis]. Calgary, AB: University of Calgary; 2007.
2019	Donlon JP. Restraint Biomechanics in Frontal Impacts With Inboard-Leaning Occupants [Master's thesis]. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia; August 2019.