[Injuries caused by frontal and side collisions]

The injuries of 100 passengers killed in automobile accidents and technical accident reconstruction data were recorded in a databank and analyzed according to the victim's age, survival time, extent of injuries, seat-belt protection, position of the seat, contusions, intrusions and Delta-v as a measure of passenger stress. 25 in-town, 39 rural road and 36 highway accidents were recorded, involving 74 drivers, 22 front-seat and 4 back-seat passengers as victims. The accidents were head-on in 79 cases, 17 side and 4 rear-end collisions. Fatal injuries were observed starting at Delta-v 40 km/h. Half of the victims were less than 30 years of age, 2/3 not wearing seat-belts and 1/3 of the drivers had blood alcohol concentrations of 1.0-2.5 g%. The most frequent injuries involved the arms, chest and skull. 88% of the victims died within 2 hours of the accident, and 82% were very severely poly-traumatized with 2-5 serious individual injuries and 48% with multiple injuries resulting in death. The chest was the body area subjected to the greatest biomechanical impact in the passengers wearing seat-belts.