Publi­ca­ti­ons

Functions of vehicle operation, such as windscreen wiper settings, are increasingly being implemented digitally and operated via touch displays. They integrate many functions. However their operation distracts from the driving task. In a study, the UDV therefore investigated how in-vehicle HMI should be designed to be as least distractive as possible.

More than 10 years ago, the German Insurers Accident Research assessed the accident risk posed by farm tractors in roadtraffic and identified typical patterns. Initial assessments of the figures currently reported in the German traffic accident statistics and the insurers’ accident database (UDB) have shown that the occurrence of accidents involving farm tractors has changed during the intervening period.

The so-called “feedback intervention for senior drivers in real traffic situa-tions” was developed as part of a UDV pilot project undertaken in 2019 in order to maintain the driving competencies of senior car drivers in the long term or even to improve these.

For some time, society has increasingly been using the term “gender gap” to discuss whether women are under-represented compared to men as beneficiaries of research and development and whether insufficient con[1]sideration is paid to their gender-related specificities. The aim of the present study was to determine the influence of gender on the risk of serious injury to car occupants on the basis of German accident data.

Fixed speed cameras are very effective in reducing accidents. That is one of the findings of a new study by the German Insurers A cident Research.

Are accidents between cars and cyclists in driveways supposedly unimportant? In order to investigate this question, the German Insurers Accident Research has examined accidents of this type as part of a study.

In road traffic, pedestrians must use visual and acoustic information to assess the movement of vehicles in order to avoid collisions with a vehicle for example when crossing a road. Pedestrians are among the most vulnerable road users. In 2020, a total of 26,130 pedestrians were involved in crashes with personal injury. Most of the road users killed in urban areas were walking.

Although serious crashes and fire incidents involving buses and coaches are rare, they can have desastrous outcomes when they occur due to the large number of passengers transported in a single vehicle. The German Insurers Accident Research contracted a research project to Trier University in order to investigate into the possibilities to enhance and speed up the evacuation process in coaches. The focus was on accident scenarios, particularly those in which the coach tipped over onto its side.

In terms of mileage, federal motorways are considered as particularly safe roads. However, on no other roads in Germany are so many injuries registered per kilometre by road traffic accidents. Accidents in longitudinal traffic are particularly frequent on motorways, especially collisions with vehicles driving ahead or waiting. Around 40 per cent of accidents involving fatalities occur in the dark.