The most frequent serious accident configurations are vehicle to vehicle accidents (73%), and run over pedestrians (18%). Other important features are the permanent consequences sustained by people subjected to serious injury. A six-month follow-up after the traumatic event highlights that 7% of the

people die, 2% remain in a vegetative state, 18% and 32% suffered, respectively, a serious and moderate disability, while 41% show a good recovery. The analysis of the state-of-the-art shows that in-depth knowledge of real road accident data is very important for the selleck chemical comprehension of accident causation, mechanism of injury, and injury patterns [6]. Today the effects of accidents Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical on car occupants and vulnerable road users are much better known than in the past, thanks to crash tests and computer simulation techniques. The aim of crash tests is to provide qualitative or quantitative data, the first regarding the body parts that have impacted with some area of the passenger compartment or external vehicle and the kinematic

followed Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical by the occupants, while the second regards the acceleration and force parameters on each body region of the test dummies. All this information is useful to understand the body part injured and the computation of the injury criterions, i.e. the Head Injury Criterion (HIC) and the Neck Injury Criterion (NIC) for the head and neck regions [7,8]. From these it is possible to calculate the probability of having a lesion corresponding to a given AIS score respective to these body regions. In the crash tests, Anthropometric Dummies (AD) or Post Mortem Human Subject (PMHS) are used Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical for the evaluation of the injuries, while in the computer simulation techniques Multi-Body Human Models (MBHM) or Finite-Element Human Models (FEHM) are used Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical respectively. However, the AD and MBHM are not completely satisfactory give that the capability of the dummies to reproduce human behaviour, and particularly the injury description, is limited [9]. But also for the PMHS, the correlation with real injuries does not always correspond to the real outcome, due to the condition of the PMHS, e.g.

inactive muscles, decomposition, positioning and support, age, height, weight. In-depth accident studies allow the monitoring of the injuries sustained by the people involved in serious road accidents, in term of type, localization, frequency MTMR9 and severity compared to vehicle and crash configurations, objects impacted, and so on. This type of research gives the possibility to relate real accident situations, as well as crash tests. Structures causing injuries can be recognized at an early stage. Feedback regarding the road traffic engineering can also be obtained. The data is also used for recognizing and assessing potential areas of future safety developments, evaluating vehicle safety performance in real world accident situations, and supporting and validating computer simulations.