Lethal pedestrian--passenger car collisions in Berlin. Changed injury patterns in two different time intervals

To expand the passive safety of automobiles protecting traffic participants technological innovations were done in the last decades. Objective of our retrospective analysis was to examine if these technical modifications led to a clearly changed pattern of injuries of pedestrians whose death was caused by the accidents. Another reduction concerns the exclusion of injured car passengers--only pedestrians walking or standing at the moment of collision were included. We selected time intervals 1975-1985 and 1991-2004 (=years of construction of the involved passenger cars). The cars were classified depending on their frontal construction in types as presented by Schindler et al. [Schindler V, Kühn M, Weber S, Siegler H, Heinrich T. Verletzungsmechanismen und Wirkabschätzungen der Fahrzegfrontgestaltung bei Pkw-Fussgänger-Kollisionen. Abschlussbericht im Auftrag der Deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft e.V. TU-Berlin Fachgebiet Kraftfahrzeuge (GDV) 2004:36-40]. In both periods more than 90% of all cars were from the usual types small/medium/large class. Hundred and thirty-four autopsy records of such cases from Department of Forensic Medicine (Charité Berlin) data were analysed. The data included technical information of the accidents and vehicles and the external and internal injuries of the victims. The comparison of the two periods showed a decrease of serious head injuries and femoral fractures but an increase of chest-, abdominal and pelvic injuries. This situation could be explained by an increased occurrence of soft-face-constructions and changed front design of modern passenger cars, resulting in a favourable effects concerning head impact to the car during accident. Otherwise the same kinetic energy was transferred to the (complete) victim - but because of a displacement of main focus of impact the pattern of injuries modified (went distally).