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Would ABS or Airbags have helped? Data from Hundreds of Indian accidents analysed... Our roads are death-traps:

 142,000 lives are lost on Indian roads every year.



 India's road accident fatality count is the highest in the world.



 A road accident takes place every minute. A fatal one every 4 minutes.



 Our "Accidents in India" thread has 1117 pages, 9.7 million views and several new submissions daily.

In 2013 the total number of accidents with injuries registered was 486,476. In those accidents, a shocking 137,572 people died:





There's a lot of data points in the above summary, however, there aren't too many details in terms of what vehicles the accidents involved, what could have prevented them, whether the occupants were belted up, etc.



That's where the following graphs are a bit different...



In 2011 Bosch Engineering formalized an Accident Research team. The focus is currently on 4 national highways near Coimbatore, the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and Ahmedabad, collecting data on all kinds of traffic accidents with casualties.



So far, they've analysed 990+ cases - which includes logging several hundred parameters, taking pictures of the scene, measurements, injury information and reconstruction of the accident.







The following slides are the results of the Bosch team's analysis (though note the relatively small sample sizes, and the fact that these results might be more location-specific). Nonetheless, there's some interesting insights in here.



Most fatal accidents involve bike users - no surprise there. However, if you consider that the 2-wheeler market is roughly 4 times the size of the car market, and cars are generally considered to be safer, the mere 1.7x difference in fatalities seems disproportionately low:





A whopping 55% of accidents are head-on collisions and collisions with stationary objects. I'd imagine these are more to do with poor infrastructure and driver education/skill, than what most people would truly consider an 'accident'. Of course this chart is also a great way for Bosch to point out how (their) safety systems might help. As you can see they seem to have taken seat-belts as a given, which is great - but unfortunately in India we're still at the stage where hardly anyone is even using seat-belts:





For cars, ABS could have made a noticeable difference in 30% of the studied accidents. In 2/5th of those cases, it would have prevented the accident entirely:





Powered Two-Wheelers show an even stronger case for ABS! Note that for 2-wheelers, even something as basic as a reduced collision speed can make a major difference in injuries sustained:





Now for a really sad one. Seat-belts - despite being available in most cars - were only confirmed to have been used in just 13% of the cases on these highways:





Note the difference between fatal/serious injuries in cars not equipped with airbags, and those with airbags:





And finally, a quick overview of the safety-related legislation we can expect in the next 5 years. Some hope; but it really needs to be combined with education about road safety to be truly effective:





The full report & summary are attached below: In 2013 the total number of accidents with injuries registered was 486,476. In those accidents, a shocking 137,572 people died:There's a lot of data points in the above summary, however, there aren't too many details in terms of what vehicles the accidents involved, what could have prevented them, whether the occupants were belted up, etc.In 2011 Bosch Engineering formalized an Accident Research team. The focus is currently on 4 national highways near Coimbatore, the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and Ahmedabad, collecting data on all kinds of traffic accidents with casualties.So far, they've analysed 990+ cases - which includes logging several hundred parameters, taking pictures of the scene, measurements, injury information and reconstruction of the accident.The following slides are the results of the Bosch team's analysis (though note the relatively small sample sizes, and the fact that these results might be more location-specific). Nonetheless, there's some interesting insights in here.Most fatal accidents involve bike users - no surprise there. However, if you consider that the 2-wheeler market is roughly 4 times the size of the car market, and cars are generally considered to be safer, the mere 1.7x difference in fatalities seems disproportionately low:A whopping 55% of accidents are head-on collisions and collisions with stationary objects. I'd imagine these are more to do with poor infrastructure and driver education/skill, than what most people would truly consider an 'accident'. Of course this chart is also a great way for Bosch to point out how (their) safety systems might help. As you can see they seem to have taken seat-belts as a given, which is great - but unfortunately in India we're still at the stage where hardly anyone is even using seat-belts:For cars, ABS could have made a noticeable difference in 30% of the studied accidents. In 2/5th of those cases, it would have prevented the accident entirely:Powered Two-Wheelers show an even stronger case for ABS! Note that for 2-wheelers, even something as basic as a reduced collision speed can make a major difference in injuries sustained:Now for a really sad one. Seat-belts - despite being available in most cars - were only confirmed to have been used in just 13% of the cases on these highways:Note the difference between fatal/serious injuries in cars not equipped with airbags, and those with airbags:And finally, a quick overview of the safety-related legislation we can expect in the next 5 years. Some hope; but it really needs to be combined with education about road safety to be truly effective:The full report & summary are attached below: Attached Files Summary of Presentation_NEW.pdf (88.6 KB, 750 views) RBEI_P_PressRelease_Accident_Research_NEW.pdf (1.32 MB, 716 views) Last edited by Rehaan : 11th December 2014 at 19:49 . Reason: Updating attached PDFs on request.