SYNTHESIS OF STATISTICAL DATA ON TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS IN FRANCE, WEST GERMANY, ITALY AND UNITED KINGDOM

A statistical balance-sheet of traffic accidents should correspond to a classification of accidents by categories established with carefully selected parameters. The choice of these parameters only depends on the nature of questions propounded, to which statistics are wished to answer. In the present communication, accidnets were described and gathered so as to give the first answers available in France, Germany, Italy and United Kingdom to the following synthetic questions; how many killed and injured people would be saved, should such safety measures be adopted, capable of such performances under such impact conditions? What characteristics should the "equivalent" tests have so as to be very representative and to avoid either too little or too much severity, which in either case might make false the choice of countermeasures, delay their adoption or alter the benefit/cost ratio. We referred to official documents published by National Departments of Transportation, Insurance Companies publications (particularly H. U. K., Germany) and data collected by bi-disciplinary accident investigation teams (University of Birmingham, Peugeot-Renault Association, Fiat, the teams of which analyzed 2,000 cases, Volkswagen and Daimler-Benz teams). Because of numerous divergences between the different sources regarding criteria used in impacts classificaiton, we have retained in the comparative classificaitons only the most homogeneous data, at the risk of not showing interesting but isolated informations: that is to say pertaining to one source or another, but statistical reach of which looked insufficient. (A)