What can vehicle design contribute ?
Vehicle design is fundamental to a safe traffic system which requires safe interaction between users, vehicles and the road environment. Vehicle design, which takes account of the behavioural and physical limitations of road users, can address a range of risk factors and help to reduce exposure to risk, crash involvement and crash injury severity. To date, vehicle engineering for improved safety has usually been directed towards modifying a vehicle to help the driver avoid a crash, or to protect those inside in the event of a crash. Recently, attention in Europe has been given to crash protective design for those outside the vehicle.
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Key system risk factors
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Human
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Vehicles and equipments
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Road
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Exposure
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traffic system use
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too early access to driving or riding a motor vehicle
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availability of high performance motor vehicles
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poor land-use planning, user mix
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Pre-crash
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crash occurrence
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speeding, impairment
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poor lighting, braking, handling, speed management
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poor road design or layout, absence of speed limits and pedestrian facilities
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Crash
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injury during the crash
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non-use of restraints or helmets
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poor crash protective design
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absence of forgiving roadside (e.g. crash barriers)
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Post-crash
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post crash injury
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poor access to care
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poor evacuation
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absence of rescue facility
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A review of the effectiveness of casualty reduction measures in the United Kingdom between 1980 and 1996 found that the greatest contribution to casualty reduction was secondary safety or crash protection in vehicles. This accounted for around 15% of the reduction, compared with 11% for drink-drive measures and 6.5% for road safety engineering measures [14].
Major improvements in vehicle safety design have taken place over the last decade in Europe leading to a large reduction in fatal and serious injury risk amongst car occupants. These results are due to a combination of the effects of new European legislative crash protection standards and the impact of new consumer information systems providing objective data on the performance of cars in state of the art crash tests and real crashes.
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