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Loughborough University

Loughborough University
Leicestershire, UK
LE11 3TU
+44 (0)1509 263171

The View - Spring / Summer 2008

Two people inspecting damaged car

Driving down road deaths

‘Horrific car crash leaves four dead’. It is an all-too familiar headline – news stories from across the country report daily on people who have lost their lives or been seriously injured in car accidents. With more vehicles on the UK’s roads than ever before it is vital that new and improved ways of preventing car crash deaths are found.

For more than 25 years Loughborough University’s Vehicle Safety Research Centre (VSRC) has been helping the Government and motor industry ensure the cars of today and tomorrow offer the best possible protection to occupants.

Rob Newton and James LenardEstablished in 1982 within the University’s Ergonomics and Safety Research Institute (ESRI), the VSRC is the largest crash investigation research group in the world. The Centre examines the causes of accidents and injuries, investigating real life crashes, and over the years has made major contributions to European road and vehicle safety, as well as important advances in the science of crash analysis. Its expertise and reputation in this area, along with that of the University’s Driver Sleepiness Research Group, secured Loughborough its sixth Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in 2007.

One of the VSRC’s longest running projects is the Co-operative Crash Injury Study (CCIS). The study was launched by the Department for Transport (DfT) in 1983 amidst growing concern for the safety of car drivers and passengers. The VSRC and the Birmingham Automotive Safety Centre, based at the University of Birmingham, were selected to work on the project alongside the DfT’s Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) and Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), which is now a private enterprise.

“Crash investigation and analysis was a relatively new and developing area of research when CCIS was launched and the University was keen to expand its work in this field,” explains James Lenard, the CCIS project leader at the VSRC. “Being chosen to be part of the project was a big achievement for Loughborough and contributed to the development of the VSRC into the hugely successful organisation it is today.”

Crash investigationNow in its eighth phase, CCIS is one of the world's largest and most well respected studies of car occupant injury causation. Each year the project teams investigate more than 1,200 crashes involving cars. Accidents undergo detailed investigations, and examinations of the damaged cars are carried out to determine the performance of the vehicle during the crash. The examinations include the role of seat belts, airbags and other safety devices. Injuries sustained by the occupants are then matched to the vehicle and documented in an anonymous electronic database.

The VSRC has eight team members dedicated to CCIS, who are experts in the field of case study selection, accident investigation and medical injury information. Working closely with all the project partners, regional police forces, hospitals and coroners, the team examines around 400 cars every year that have been involved in serious collisions in Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire.

“For the CCIS the cars we examine have to fit into a set sample criteria to ensure the data we collect is relevant and comparable,” explains Rob Newton, the VSRC’s Crash Investigation Manager. “We only investigate accidents that have resulted in the death or serious injury of a vehicle occupant, that involve a car that is seven years old or less and where the vehicle has had to be towed away from the scene of the incident. Where several cars have been involved in an accident we examine all the vehicles concerned as they all have an important part to play in helping us to understand how a collision occurred and how injuries were sustained. We also examine a proportion of slight injury collisions that involve cars that are five years old or less. This enables us to learn from cars that have performed well in accidents.

“When examining vehicles we use a very strict methodology that has been developed over many years to ensure we collect the exact same data from each investigation we carry out. During each examination we gather very detailed information about the exterior and interior of the vehicle to help us determine how someone was injured, and then correlate our findings with information gathered by the police at the scene of the crash and medical data collected from hospitals. When we have all the information we put together a precise picture of what happened in the accident, how injuries were sustained and how the car performed.”

All the information collected by the University’s accident investigators is then fed into a central CCIS database, along with the findings of the other accident investigation teams located across the country.

“There are many different organisations that make use of the CCIS data,” James said. “The Government, for example, want to know what rules or regulations relating to car safety are likely to be of benefit and should be introduced, and what has been the effect of the regulations it has already introduced. Initially the main remit of the CCIS was to establish if the DfT’s decision early in the 1980s to make the wearing of seat belts in the front seats of vehicles mandatory was the correct one. All indications were that this would help save lives but there was no scientific research to back this up.

“You can use computer simulations and laboratory tests to help assess the effectiveness of car safety devices, but you can only truly know if they are saving lives by looking at how they perform in actual accidents. A mechanical dummy in an artificial environment doesn’t react like a human would in a car crash and real accidents are much more diverse than what can be replicated in laboratories. However, by combining all these methods of investigation you can make real advances in car safety. Very early on the CCIS was able to illustrate just how effective seat belts were in saving lives and preventing serious injury.”

As well as the Government, the motor industry also uses the data collected through the CCIS to get guidance on what new car safety devices are needed, how current devices are performing and how they can be improved.

“The feedback to industry is an incredibly important part of the CCIS,” James added. “The investigations we carry out enable industry to make informed decisions and provide specific data on where and what type of protection new safety devices need to offer. For example in side impacts, should car manufacturers be focussing their efforts on trying to protect the lower part of the body or the chest and head? We can tell them, from our findings where the most serious injuries occur and what area of the body needs the most protection. Feedback on where current safety devices are failing or having little impact is also vital for industry to ensure they move forward in the right direction.”

Analysis of the CCIS data provides a unique view on how car structures, restraints and advanced safety systems influence car occupant injury. This real life injury and vehicle information has been the foundation for many of the car safety improvements that have occurred since the study began. CCIS data has directly influenced vehicle design improvements, legislation, consumer crash test programmes and test tool injury criteria. Thus the project has and continues to make positive contributions to the development of safer vehicles.

“It is very rewarding to know that the work you carry out each day is ultimately saving lives,” James added. “When we examine vehicles we know that a life has been lost or someone has been seriously injured, but the CCIS enables something positive to come from these many tragedies and helps prevent future ones from occurring.”

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