Passenger safety in severe or protectable bus rollover accidents

摘要

The international regulatory work going on in Geneva has an essential question, which is not answered yet: considering the bus rollover accidents which are severe accidents in which there is no realistic way to protect the occupants and which are the protectable rollovers. This dividing line should be based on the silent consent of the society, of the people. This paper, based on the analysis of accident statistics (more than 300 bus rollover accidents) and different full scale rollover tests tries to define the concept and the definition of the protectable rollover accidents (PRA) Having this concept the next basic question is: how to specify the approval rollover test in international regulations (e.g. in ECE-R.66) to provide theoretically the same safety level of the occupants, whether they are travelling in traditional buses or high decker tourist coaches, small buses or double decker coaches, etc. Based on test results and theoretical analysis the paper gives some proposals for consideration. This is a relevant, up to date problem, an international expert group is working now in Geneva on that subject, how to extend the scope of ECE-R.66 regulation to all bus categories. The author is the chairman of this international expert group.