[Biomechanics and injury prevention in road traffic]

The main predicting factor for the injury severity is "speed". This fact is predominantly important with regard to the protection of pedestrians and two wheelers. Today's safety features such as new steering and breaking systems, car body construction, seat belts, head restraints and crash helmets etc. let us sometimes overlook the hazards on the road. However, further improvements can be expected from advanced restraint system combinations, reinforced frontal and lateral car structures and padding, perhaps side air bags and automatically adjusted head restraint systems. Collision reconstruction and assessment of causality are needed, e.g., in cases of soft tissue neck injuries, questionable overrunning, walking direction of impacted pedestrians, uncertain belt or helmet wearing etc. Considerable legal problems arise if the causality is judged only from clinical point of view while the important criterion of collision mechanics is not taken into account in acceptable quantitative detail. Therefore it is recommended that determining the causality of a mechanical event should be left to specially trained professionals.