www.elsevier.com/locate/jmbbm Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Rider–handlebar injury in two-wheel frontal collisions Elisabetta M. Zanetti a,n , Giordano Franceschini a , Alberto L. Audenino b a Department of Industrial Engineering—University of Perugia, Via Duranti 67, 06125 Perugia, Italy b Department of Mechanical and Aerospatial Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Cso Duca delgi Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torino, Italy article info Article history: Received 26 June 2012 Received in revised form 4 December 2012 Accepted 8 January 2013 Available online 11 February 2013 Keywords: Two-wheel riders Abdominal injury Handlebar impact model Road accidents abstract This work analyses blunt abdominal trauma produced by driver–handlebar collision, in low speed two-wheel accidents. A simplified dynamic model is introduced, whose parameters have been estimated on the basis of cadaver tests. This model allows calculating the peak impact force and the abdominal penetration depth; therefore the likelihood of occurrence of serious injuries can be estimated for different masses of contacting bodies and different speeds. Results have been checked against literature data and true-accident reports. Numerical simulations demonstrate that serious injuries (AIS43) can occur even at low speeds (o20 km/h), therefore the design of protective clothing is recommendable. The model can allow both the analysis of true accident data and the virtual testing of protective equipment in the conceptual design phase. & 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Thoracic and abdominal injuries have been found to be common among motorcyclists accidents and to be associated with a higher risk of mortality (Kraus et al., 2002); in detail, the abdomen gains the third place among the most seriously injured anatomic regions, abdominal injury accounts for 20% of hospitalised motorcyclists injuries (Dischinger et al., 2006); lastly, head injury followed by chest and abdominal trauma were found to predict a reduced survival rate (Ankarath et al., 2002). Although many studies have documented the role of trunk injuries resulting from vehicular crashes (Morris et al., 2002, 2003), few have addressed these injuries among motor- cyclists; in an analysis of motorcycle-related hospitalisations in the US, thoracic injuries are not even mentioned among the principal diagnoses as part of the 2001 Nationwide Inpatient Sample of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (Dischinger et al., 2006). More specifically, the incidence of abdominal injuries due to handlebar collision is likely to be underestimated due to insufficient documentation of the circumstances of injury events and a lack of applicable emergency codes specific for handlebar injury (Mezhir et al., 2007). On the other hand, data concerning impact with the handlebar in slow speed bicycling crashes demonstrate that this kind of injury can occur, even at low speed, it has a significant incidence, and it can lead to dramatic consequences: this phenomenon has been identified as a mechanism of life threatening injuries in children, and as the predominant cause of abdominal injury in children age 6–10 years (Bergqvist et al., 1985; Arkovitz et al., 1997). In 1981, Hurt and his staff analysed 3600 motorcycle traffic accident reports in Los Angeles (Hurt et al., 1981); this study is now 30 years old, but it is still a reference for its complete- ness; one of its findings has been that the median pre-crash speed is 29.8 mph; analysing low-speed range is therefore a justifiable choice. Considering secondary prevention issues for two-wheel dri- vers, the use of helmets has been widely proved to limit the incidence of head injury (Liu et al., 2008), while no true preven- tion has been really done in relation to chest and abdominal 1751-6161/$ - see front matter & 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmbbm.2013.01.011 n Correspondence to: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Perugia, Via Duranti 65, 06125 Perugia Italy. Tel.: þ39 075 5853748; fax: þ39 075 5853703. E-mail addresses: elisabetta.zanetti@unipg.it (E.M. Zanetti), giorda@unipg.it (G. Franceschini), alberto.audenino@polito.it (A.L. Audenino). journal of the mechanical behavior of biomedical materials33 (2014) 84–92