Poster Presentation

Dr. Mátyás Matolcsy, Society of Mechanical Engineers, Hungary

The bus accidents are rare among the road accidents, therefore they are not listed separately in the national and international road accident statistics. The rate of the rollovers among all bus accidents is estimated in the range of 3-6%, therefore it is very difficult to find information, data about this really rare accident type. These information can be very useful in the work of the international expert group (in Geneva) developing the occupants safety of buses in roll-over accidents. (The author is the chairman of this expert group) There are different ways and methods for collecting this kind of accident information in the practice, their effectiveness, advantages and drawbacks are briefly summarized and after that an "unusual way" is shown: collecting and analysing media reports (TV, radio, internet, newspaper, etc.) about bus roll-overs. The bus accidents - not only the rollovers, but frontal collisions, fires, collision with trains, etc. - are interesting for the media (they are "spectacular", many casualties, etc.) so the Hungarian media report about almost all of the accidents happened in Hungary, many about the European ones and a lot of around the world. The author collects these information since eight years and now (2007, September) has information about 370 bus rollover accidents. The media reports are different in depth, in the details, depending on the accident itself, but there are accidents about which the reports are so detailed and illustrated that in depth analysis can be based on them. The limits of this data collecting method, the reliability of these data are discussed. The complete analysis of these data will not to go into one presentation, but some results will be shown, e.g. the frequency of the different bus categories (city and intercity bus, tourist coach, double deck coach, small bus, etc.) The city buses barely roll over. The severity of the rollover accidents will be discussed based on casualty rate (average casualty figure per acci-dent). The rollover accidents may be categorized. Some typical accidents: turn on side, roll into a ditch, roll down on a slope, combined rollover accident, etc. are specified and their fre-quency, severity are studied. Based on these categories the protectable rollover accidents (in which the occupants can be and shall be protected) may be specified. The way of the rollover accidents (the category) strongly depends on the scene, on the surroundings. The data give some information about the casualties, main injury mechanisms and they show clearly the essential importance of the survival space (strength of the superstructure). Another important issue is the evacuation and rescue possibilities after the accident, the usability of different emergency exits. The bus rollover accidents are very rare and have a wide range scatter in time and space, therefore the traditional data collecting methods can not provide information in many re-spects.

Poster presentation: Vehicle safety