Anders Kullgren

Chalmers University of Technology · Department of Applied Mechanics

In line with the UN’s global goals on sustainability several initiatives are promoting walking. However, if effective interventions are not implemented an increased number of pedestrians will lead to more road casualties. It is important to take appropriate decisions on interventions to reach Vision Zero adopted by the Swedish Government. This stud...

Objective: Improvements in road infrastructure and vehicle safety have been achieved in many countries during the last decades. As the number of fatalities have dropped, the consequences of non-fatal injuries have been brought into focus. Therefore, the objective was to investigate self-reported health status and health-related quality of life sev...

Objective: As bicyclists account for the largest share of serious injuries in Sweden, focus to improve safety for bicyclists is needed. While knowledge about fatal bicycle crashes is rather extensive, the number of studies that have investigated non-fatal injuries is still rather limited. The aim of this study was to estimate the potential of diffe...

Objective: The objective of this article is to describe the characteristics of fatal crashes with bicyclists on Swedish roads in rural and urban areas and to investigate the potential of bicycle helmets and different vehicle and road infrastructure interventions to prevent them. The study has a comprehensive approach to provide road authorities and...

Whiplash Associated Disorder (WAD) is still one of the most poorly understood traffic injuries. Cervical dorsal root ganglion lesion is a potential cause of WAD. This short communication covers factors that potentially contribute to the difference in WAD risk between female and male car occupants in rear impacts. A prototype female rear impact dumm...

Objective Whiplash-associated disorder (WAD), commonly denoted whiplash injury, is a worldwide problem. These injuries occur at relatively low changes of velocity (typically <25 km/h) in impacts from all directions. Rear impacts, however, are the most common in the injury statistics. Females have a 1.5–3 times higher risk of whiplash injury than ma...

Automated Emergency Braking systems reduce impact speeds, and consequently, injuries in car-to-pedestrian impacts. The development of assessment methods for these systems has received considerable attention. Forward Collision Warning systems similarly aim at reducing impact speed, but have received less attention. Casualty cost reductions of severa...

Objective: Several studies have reported the benefits of motorcycle antilock braking systems (ABS) in reducing injury crashes, due to improved stability and braking performance. Both aspects may prevent crashes but may also reduce the crash severity when a collision occurs. However, it is still unknown to what extent the reductions in injury crash...

There is limited knowledge of the long-term medical consequences for occupants injured in car crashes in various impact directions. Thus, the objective was to evaluate whether injuries leading to permanent medical impairment differ depending on impact direction. In total, 36,743 injured occupants in car crashes that occurred between 1995 and 2011 w...

Cyclist injuries leading to long‐term consequences are common and therefore important to identify in order to design a more sustainable road transport system. Previous research has showed that almost 70% of all impairing injuries were to the upper and lower extremities. The most common injuries to the upper extremities were to the shoulder and the...

Pedestrians and bicyclists account for a significant share of deaths and serious injuries in the road transport system. The protection of pedestrians in car-to-pedestrian crashes has therefore been addressed by friendlier car fronts and since 1997, the European New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP) has assessed the level of protection for most car...

Objective: As fatalities from car crashes decrease, focus on medical impairment following car crashes becomes more essential. This study assessed the risk of permanent medical impairment based on car occupant injuries. The aim was to study whether the risk of permanent medical impairment differs depending on age and gender. Methods: In total, 36...

Objectives: This study set out to evaluate the effectiveness of motorcycle antilock braking systems (ABS) in reducing real-life crashes. Since the European Parliament has voted on legislation making ABS mandatory on all new motorcycles over 125 cc from 2016, the fitment rate in Europe is likely to increase in the coming years. Though previous rese...

Objectives: Whiplash-associated disorders (WADs), or whiplash injuries, due to low-severity vehicle crashes are of great concern in motorized countries and it is well established that the risk of such injuries is higher for females than for males, even in similar crash conditions. Recent protective systems have been shown to be more beneficial for...

Low-speed Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) is a safety system designed to support passenger car drivers to avoid or mitigate the consequences of rear-end crashes, mostly in urban road environments. This study set out to evaluate the effectiveness of this technology in reducing real-life crashes, based on Swedish police-reported injury crashes 201...

Objective: The objective was to identify whether it was possible to change driver behavior by economic incentives and thereby reduce crash risk. Furthermore, the objective was to evaluate the participants’ attitudes toward the pay-as-you-speed (PAYS) concept. Methods: A one-year PAYS trial with economic incentives for keeping speed limits using in...

It has been proposed in the European Union (EU) to adopt a Maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale (MAIS) of 3 or greater as the basis for a road safety target. To have a common definition of serious injury across the EU is in itself very positive. In this study, fatalities, MAIS 3+, MAIS 2+ and injuries leading to permanent medical impairment (PMI) were...

The aim was to investigate the development of Whiplash Associated Disorders (WAD) leading to long‐term consequences for drivers separated for gender in cars introduced at different year intervals and in different impact directions. An additional aim was to analyze the influence of various whiplash preventive concepts on WAD in rear impacts. The dev...

The BioRID is recommended for legislative rear-end impact seat tests. Recommended injury criteria are, however, lacking; biomechanical data are limited and confines any evaluation of proposed criteria. This study aimed at addressing these limitations by comparing BioRID II data from sled tests with real-life accident data. Results will evaluate inj...

Estimation of crash severity from crash recorders is important in the evaluations of vehicle crashworthiness. The number of cars fitted with on-board crash recorders is increasing. The majority of these recorders are integrated with airbag sensors that usually have limitations regarding e.g. recording time and sampling rate. The aim with this study...

In this paper, a test-based assessment method for pre-crash warning and braking systems is presented where the effectiveness of a system is measured by its ability to reduce the number of injuries of a given type or severity in car-to-car rear-end collisions. Injuries with whiplash symptoms lasting longer than 1 month and MAIS2+ injuries in both ve...

Objective: The objective was to identify whether it was possible to change driver behavior by economic incentives and thereby reduce crash risk. Furthermore, the objective was to evaluate the participants' attitudes toward the pay-as-you-speed (PAYS) concept. Methods: A one-year PAYS trial with economic incentives for keeping speed limits using...

This study set out to evaluate the effectiveness of Antilock-Brakes (ABS) on motorcycles in reducing real-life crashes. Since the European Parliament has voted a legislation to make ABS mandatory for all new motorcycles over 125cc from 2016, the fitment rate in the entire Europe is likely to increase in the years to come. Previous research, however...

Knowledge of how crash severity influences injury risk in car crashes is essential in order to create a safe road transport system. Analyses of real-world crashes increase the ability to obtain such knowledge.The aim of this study was to present injury risk functions based on real-world frontal crashes where crash severity was measured with on-boar...

In the design of a safe road transport system there is a need to better understand the safety challenges lying ahead. One way of doing that is to evaluate safety technology with retrospective analysis of crashes. However, by using retros- pective data there is the risk of adapting safety innovations to scenarios irrelevant in the future. Also, chal...

Neck injury due to low severity vehicle crashes is of worldwide concern and the injury risk is greater for females than males. However, whiplash protection systems have shown to be more beneficial for males than females. Hence there is a need for improved tools to address female protection. The objective is to develop and evaluate a 50th percentile...

This study focuses on frontal crashes between passenger cars and heavy goods vehicles (HGV) in Sweden. The objectives are to estimate how risk for moderate and severe injuries (MAIS2+) for passenger car occupants correlates with change of velocity (delta v) in this type of crashes and to estimate the potential benefits of Autonomous Emergency Braki...

Studies have shown that crashworthiness of cars addressing fatal and serious injuries has generally improved over time. However, the development regarding injuries leading to medical impairment has not been shown to the same extent. The objective was to investigate the development of Whiplash associated Disorders (WAD) leading to long-term conseque...

The risk of injury is known to be related to age. The elderly population has a far higher risk of both serious injury and fatality, for a given severity of impact. While this is known, it is not always used for the understanding of the options for injury prevention that is available or could be developed. In the present study, the risk of in partic...

The BioRID II has been recommended to be used in future legislative dynamic rear-end impact seat performance tests. Recommended injury criteria and assessment reference values to be used with the dummy is however still pending. This is mainly due to the incomplete understanding of the injury site and mechanisms responsible for the symptoms presente...

Neck injury due to low severity vehicle crashes is of worldwide concern and it is well established that the risk of such injuries are higher for females than for males, even in similar crash conditions. In addition, recently developed protective systems have shown to be less protective of females than males. Hence there is a need for improved tools...

The objective was to identify system weaknesses and components (road user, vehicles, and road) where improvements would yield the highest potential for further reductions in car occupant injuries. The study also aimed to evaluate whether it is a difference in type of improvements due to injury severity (fatally injured, Maximum Abbreviated Injury S...

The aim of this study was to identify risk factors in side impact. In particular risk factors such as kerb weight of striking/struck passenger car, age, gender, the presence of a front-seat occupant and side airbags influence the injury outcome. The Swedish database STRADA was used to analyze and identify risk factors in side impact crashes. All ne...

Studies have shown that crashworthiness of cars addressing fatal and serious injuries has generally improved over time. However, the development regarding injuries leading to medical impairment has not been shown to the same extent. The objective was to investigate the development of Whiplash associated Disorders (WAD) leading to long-term conseque...

The objective of this study was 2-fold: first, to compare Euro NCAP safety ratings of cars with those published by the Folksam real-world injury ratings; and second, to compare injury risk measures between Euro NCAP 2 and 5 Star cars with real-world injury and disability outcomes using police and insurance injury data. Car models were grouped accor...

Since the late 90s various whiplash prevention concepts have been introduced on the market. The objective was to study the effectiveness of whiplash protection concepts based on real-world injury outcome. In the study the influence on whiplash symptoms lasting longer than one month was studied. Cars fitted with any kind of whiplash protection conc...

The aim of this study was to aid the optimisation of future, vehicle based, pedestrian injury countermeasures. The German In-Depth Accident Study (GIDAS) database was queried for pedestrians impacted by the front of a passenger car or van. A total of 1030 cases from 1998 to 2008 were studied including 161 severely (AIS3+) injured pedestrians. Consi...

The objective was to study the effectiveness of whiplash protection concepts in cars due to gender and the effectiveness of various concepts based on real-world injury outcome. In the study the influence on whiplash symptoms lasting longer than one month and those leading to permanent medical impairment was studied. In average the existing whiplash...

The objective in this study of crashed cars fitted with on-board crash pulse recorders (CPR) was to present differences in average crash severity and distribution of crash severity, depending on collision partner. The investigation included both frontal and rear-end two-vehicle and single-vehicle crashes, into deformable and rigid roadside objects....

An evaluation of the influence of crash pulse shape on the risk to sustain injuries in medium severity frontal collisions was carried out by reconstructing a number of real world accidents using mathematical simulations. Ten crashes with restrained occupants, recorded crash pulses and known injury outcomes were selected for reconstruction. The cras...

The introduction of automatic emergency braking changes the distribution of impact severity thus the resulting injury risk. In the calculation of the possible safety impact, risk functions must be used. These functions can be derived in different ways. In this paper, matched pair techniques have been used to study if the power models developed by N...

Electronic Stability Control (ESC) has been proven to be one of the most effective safety technologies, reducing serious crashes substantially. In Sweden the first attempt to stimulate the sales of ESC started in mid 2003. By using several market oriented methods the penetration rate on new cars reached over 90% 48 months later and is by late 2008...

Many modern cars have seat belt reminders (SBRs) using loud and clear sound and light signals. These systems have developed over the last few years. This study investigates how these modern systems influence the seat belt use in real-life traffic in built-up areas in some European cities. The data were collected by field observations in major citie...

In addition to investigating risk of death due to road traffic injuries, there is a need to better describe the risk of serious consequences. This study assessed risk of permanent medical impairment based on road traffic injuries classified according to AIS-2005. Injured car occupants were followed for at least 5 years to assess permanent medical i...

In the last 10 years car seats have been specifically designed to mitigate short and long-term neck injuries caused by rear end impacts. During this period of time, anti-whiplash seat ratings also have been introduced. Recent research have shown rating methods to correlate to real-life performance. The objective of this study was to describe possib...

The primary objective of the study was to examine the relationship between patterns in car-to-car crashes involving young drivers and car and driver characteristics and the research design was a national register-based prospective cohort study. Individual records in a cohort born 1970-1972 are linked to road-traffic-crash data (1988-2000). Subjects...

Real-life crashes with cars fitted with on-board crash pulse recorders were used to study the influence of their collision partner, in both two- and single-vehicle crashes, on crash severity and injury risk. The crash severity was lower in single-vehicle crashes compared with two-vehicle crashes. Both average change of velocity and mean acceleratio...

Recently, smart seat belt reminders (SBR) have been introduced in cars. By increasingly reminding drivers and passengers if they are not using the seat belt, the intention is to increase the belt use to almost 100%. The objective was to study if there were differences in driver's seat belt use between cars with and without SBR. Drivers of cars with...

Electronic Stability Control (ESC) was introduced on the mass market in 1998. Since then, several studies showing the positive effects of ESC have been presented. In this study, data from crashes occurring in Sweden during 1998 to 2004 were used to evaluate the effectiveness of ESC on real life crashes. The effectiveness was analyzed for different...

Validated injury criteria are essential when developing restraints for AIS 1 neck injuries, which should protect occupants in a variety of crash situations. Such criteria have been proposed and attempts have been made to validate or disprove these. However, no criterion has yet been fully validated. The objective of this study is to evaluate the in...

A new EEVC Working Group, WG20 (Rear Impact test procedure(s) and the mitigation of neck injury), was given the task to develop test procedures for rear end collisions, with a prime focus on neck injury reduction (whiplash). The work is carried out in collaboration with the EEVC WG12 (Advanced Anthropometry Adult Crash Dummies). WG20 is responsible...

Objective—The study examines whether socioeconomic and sex differences in road-traffic crashes leading to injury vary according to car-safety level.Method—Individuals records of subjects born 1970–1972 registered in the Swedish Census of 1985 (n = 334,070) are linked to road-traffic-crash data for the period 1988–2000 for first police-registered tw...

There is continuing controversy regarding the role of car mass in occupant — risk. Injury risk is influenced not only by the vehicle deformation characteristics and the occupant restraint system, but also by the size and mass of both case and partner cars. Recent research has shown that injury is better correlated with mean car acceleration than wi...

Estimating vehicle collision severity is a key factor in biomechanics as it allows correlation of injuries with impact severity in real accidents. Key vehicle parameters for injury are the mean, peak and shape of the acceleration pulse. Real world frontal collision patterns reflect the distributions of overlap, impact angle, vehicle compliance and...

The risk of soft tissue neck injuries as a result of rear impacts is influenced by both vehicle specific features and the impact severity of the crash. Links between real-world neck injury symptoms and dummy readings as well as neck injury criteria obtained from crash test dummies needs to establish for test methods that evaluate protection against...

By changing the seat force-deflection characteristics in an older car model without a certain whiplash-protection system, an after market Anti-Whiplash Device (AWD) was evaluated. The AWD is mounted under the front end of the seat-rails. In a rear impact, the forward acceleration of the occupant is reduced by a force controlled yielding of the seat...

ESP (Electronic Stability Program) has recently been introduced onto the market in an effort to reduce the number and severity of loss-of-control automobile accidents. This reduction is expected to be particularly evident for accidents on roads with low friction (e.g., wet or icy conditions). This study aimed to evaluate the statistical effectivene...

One hundred ninety-five rear impacts with both front- and rear-seat occupants in the struck car, where at least one occupant sustained permanent disability, were selected for study. There was a significantly higher disability risk for the female rear-seat occupant compared with the male driver. Furthermore, a higher risk was found for female rear-s...

To date no AIS1 neck injury mechanism has been established, thus no neck injury criterion has been validated against such mechanism. Validation methods not related to an injury mechanism may be used. The aim of this paper was to validate different proposed neck injury criteria with reconstructed real-life crashes with recorded crash pulses and with...

There are variations in rear impacts causing Whiplash Associated Disorders (WADs) which lead to short-and long-term consequences. Most rear impacts lead to no injury or to symptoms that are temporary. Impacts where the duration of symptoms differs need to be separated in analyses in order to isolate representative rear impact conditions in which mo...

The aim was to study the influence of new car design on the distribution and disability risk of injuries to different body regions. The cars were categorised in 5-year periods according to year of introduction. The injuries of 11,535 injured car occupants, as well as 42,228 two-car crashes reported by the police between 1994 and 2000, were used. C...

There are variations in rear impacts causing Whiplash Associated Disorders (WADs) which lead to short- and long-term consequences. Most rear impacts lead to no injury or to symptoms that are temporary. Impacts where the duration of symptoms differs need to be separated in analyses in order to isolate representative rear impact conditions in which m...

Knowledge of human injury tolerance levels, especially the level of impact severity likely to produce an injury, is important in the design of a crashworthy road transport system. Such knowledge can be achieved from studies of real-life impacts where the link between impact severity and injury outcome is analysed. In order to get adequate injury ri...

The research of AIS1 neck injuries has focused on rearend collisions, but a great portion of these injuries occur in frontal impacts. AIS1 neck injuries in frontal impacts can be associated with seat belt use and it can be hypothesized that the seat belt may transfer injurious loads to the neck. This study investigates the influence of the restrain...

AIS1 neck injuries are the most frequent disabling injuries among car occupants in road traffic accidents. Although neck injury is mostly regarded as resulting from rear end collisions, almost one third of all neck injuries occur in frontal impacts. Several studies have shown the effect of airbags on injury and fatality rates. However, studies of t...

This paper presents an overview of research in progress. The research examines the interaction between roadside barriers, cars and their passive safety systems. The potential for optimising safety for the occupants of vehicles colliding with barriers is discussed. By bringing together vehicle designers, with designers and operators of the road infr...

The AIS1 neck injury is the most frequent disabling injury in frontal impacts. Recent research has shown that, similar to rear impacts, the crash pulse level rather than the speed change influence the risk of sustaining a short or long term injury. Also similar to rear impacts, different injury mechanisms have been proposed. In this study, new AIS1...

The main public-health problem concerning WAD are injuries leading to long-term consequences. Yet epidemiological studies mostly concentrate on data based on the injury outcome occurring shortly after the crash. The purpose of this article is to study the influence of crash severity in rear impacts leading to short and long-term consequences to the...

AIS1 neck injuries are the most frequent disabling injuries among car occupants in road traffic accidents. Although neck injury is mostly regarded as resulting from rear end collisions, almost one third of all neck injuries occur in frontal impacts. The injury mechanisms in both rear-end and frontal impacts are still not known, although different h...

Risk-functions describing the relationship between mechanical dose and injury response are fundamental in injury prevention research. Such risk functions for car occupants are normally derived from in-depth accident reconstruction leading to serious problems with interpretation and quality. An alternative way, based on matched-paired technique to d...

Several parameters based on acceleration levels, such as mean or peak acceleration, may correlate with injury risk, or may together with change of velocity, explain the risk of injury, and thus may form the risk function for different kind of injuries. The aim was to study the influence on injury risk for mean and peak acceleration and change of ve...

Collisions with roadside objects account for a large part of fatal and disabling injuries in road traffic accidents. Roadside collisions are different from car-to-car collisions concerning the possibility to lower the impact severity. The aim was to study pulse shapes and influence on injury in collisions with roadside objects compared to car-to-ca...

Crash data from real-life frontal car collisions, where the crash pulses have been measured with crash pulse recorders and where the influence of pulse shape on the risk of both short- and long-term disability from AIS1 neck injuries, have been studied. The risk of long-term consequences was especially influenced by the shape of the crash pulse. To...

The aim with this paper is to present an example of how to use an insurance material in injury prevention. Conclusions: It is important to be able to verify the development of passive safety of cars with sound methods and materials. This will guide both consumers and car industry to develop and buy the best possible products. It is also important f...

The general objectives of this thesis were to study the importance of valid and reliable data from real-life collisions, especially the effects of inaccurate data on analyses of eg injury risks. Furthermore an objective was to develop and validate an on-board measurement device for acceleration measurements, to be used in reconstructions of primari...

This paper presents results from real life collisions, collected in a unique data collection system, where the crash pulse has been recorded in the impact phase. Since 1992, approximately 100,000 crash recorders have been installed in vehicles, and about 300 crash pulses have been recorded. A crash test is also presented involving two vehicles of d...