Ernst Tomasch

Methods to Prevent or Mitigate Accidents with Large Animals

Although accidents with animals represent a small portion in the official statistics, these accidents have an economic effect. The regulatory costs in Germany added up to an average of 370–464 million Euros annually in the years between 2000 and 2005. The insurance companies registered between 210,000 and 235,000 deer accidents on average every year. The largest part of the data collected by the insurance companies is accidents with damage to property. But accidents with large animals are a danger to vehicle occupants. German statistics for accidents with animals for this period show between 18 and 28 fatally injured persons and between 580 and 750 severely injured and 2,100–2,600 light casualties every year. Accidents that are caused by evasive maneuvers causing running-off track and finally colliding with the infrastructure or causing a cross-over collision have not been taken into account. The aim of this investigation is to evaluate typical accident scenarios and accident simulation with large animals. In particular, the effects on the vehicle occupants are investigated by multi-body simulation methods. The occupant load for accidents with animals is determined and influencing factors on the load are derived. Based on these investigations, avoidability scenarios are developed and methods are introduced that are relevant to the vehicle (active and passive safety) and also to the infrastructure and the driver. The objective is to develop effective counteractions in order to avoid accidents with animals or at least mitigate the accident aftermath.

ADAS-Assisted Driver Behaviour in Near Missing Car-Pedestrian Accidents

In intermediate steps on the way to full driving automation, the role of the driver will remain essential, and driver’s behaviour when aided by Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) must be allowed for, in order to obtain the maximum benefit. In the present study, a driving simulator experimentation was carried out. Sixty-nine volun‐ teers were enrolled to face a simulated hazard situation involving a pedestrian; some of them were aided by ADAS, whereas others were not. The driving scenario was set up based on a statistical accident analysis and the thorough reconstruction of actual road accidents. By qualitative and quantitative analysis, some differences in drivers’ behaviour were observed in relation to the presence of ADAS devices and their different modes of acting. The positive effect of ADAS was naturally confirmed, but some of the drivers were not fully able to benefit from it.

A Risk-based Methodology To Assess Run-off-road Crashes On Austrian Motorways – The Riskant Project

Run-off-road (ROR) crashes are extremely severe road accidents that often result in serious injuries or fatalities. On Austrian motorways, about 40% of all injury accidents are ROR crashes, which account for more than 60% of the fatalities on the primary road network. This is one of the reasons why the Austrian highway operator (ASFINAG) postulates in its road safety program till 2020 that new safety strategies and new road safety measures have to be developed to prevent vehicles from running off the road and (in a worst case scenario) collide with stationary obstacles on the roadside. RISKANT is a research project funded within the 2011 Call “Transportation Infrastructure Research (VIF)” of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) in conjunction with ASFINAG. The main objective of RISKANT was to develop a risk model for crashes with stationary obstacles along the roadside. In order to achieve this goal, a so-called accident prediction model was used to estimate the probabilities of ROR crashes due to the characteristics of the road and the road environment. Furthermore, Finite element simulation studies were conducted to incorporate the severity of injuries due to collisions with different stationary obstacles. Two indices, the Acceleration Severity Index (ASI) and Theoretical Head Impact Velocity (THIV) were used to evaluate the injury risk level for vehicle occupants.

Impacts to the chest of PMHSs - Influence of impact location and load distribution on chest response

The chest response of the human body has been studied for several load conditions, but is not well known in the case of steering wheel rim-to-chest impact in heavy goods vehicle frontal collisions. The aim of this study was to determine the response of the human chest in a set of simulated steering wheel impacts. PMHS tests were carried out and analysed. The steering wheel load pattern was represented by a rigid pendulum with a straight bar-shaped front. A crash test dummy chest calibration pendulum was utilised for comparison. In this study, a set of rigid bar impacts were directed at various heights of the chest, spanning approximately 120mm around the fourth intercostal space. The impact energy was set below a level estimated to cause rib fracture. The analysed results consist of responses, evaluated with respect to differences in the impacting shape and impact heights on compression and viscous criteria chest injury responses. The results showed that the bar impacts consistently produced lesser scaled chest compressions than the hub; the Middle bar responses were around 90% of the hub responses. A superior bar impact provided lesser chest compression; the average response was 86% of the Middle bar response. For inferior bar impacts, the chest compression response was 116% of the chest compression in the middle. The damping properties of the chest caused the compression to decrease in the high speed bar impacts to 88% of that in low speed impacts. From the analysis it could be concluded that the bar impact shape provides lower chest criteria responses compared to the hub. Further, the bar responses are dependent on the impact location of the chest. Inertial and viscous effects of the upper body affect the responses. The results can be used to assess the responses of human substitutes such as anthropomorphic test devices and finite element human body models, which will benefit the development process of heavy goods vehicle safety systems.

Safety Measures for Avoiding or Mitigating the Occupant Exposure in Collisions with Large Animals

Road accidents involving large animals are responsible for a considerable number of fatalities; these are e.g. elk in Northern Europe or camels in Middle East, Horn of Africa and Maghreb. In order to address this topic, investigations concerning active and passive road safety have been launched at the King Saud University and at Graz University of Technology. Data of real accidents or accident statistics are not available in the required quality to gather typical accident scenarios. Therefore generic accidents types were derived and critical load cases were determined by means of multi body and finite element simulations. It was found that the vehicle acceleration due to the impact is not a safety issue, but the finite element simulations showed that massive local intrusions into the passenger compartment are the main cause for severe occupant injuries. Therefore, concepts for the prevention of critical intrusions were examined. In a first step the space required for the occupant movement due to the rather mediocre acceleration levels in car-to-large animal accidents was determined by multi-body simulation. In a second step different approaches preventing intrusions into the occupant-movement-space were analyzed by finite element simulation. In addition, the possible effects and requirements of active systems have been studied to demonstrate the potential of combined measures.