Overview
Children are more and more involved in all modes of transportations. They have no choice. Accidents are a possibility.
The objectives of CASPER were to reduce fatalities and injuries of children involved in traffic accidents. Therefore, the project focused on:
- improvement of the efficiency of child protection through the development of innovative tools. For example: new sensors, dummies and child human models. This will be completed by test procedures in frontal and lateral configurations, with associated injury criteria, in order to provide to CRS manufacturers the possibility to develop and test their products at a lower cost, with new methods, and at a same guarantee of efficiency;
- analysis of the reasons and consequences of misuse of child restraint systems and of the influence of the real conditions of child transport, as compared to the certification test procedures.
The main deliverables were the improvement of biomechanical behaviour of existing dummies associated to new measurements sensors, as well as dummies and child human numerical models, with improved test procedures, which will allow solving the issues for improvement of children protection.
Reports on the conditions of use of child restraint systems and consequences in accidents, including campaigns of information were made in order to solve the problem of children involved in traffic accidents.
Seven European countries were involved in this consortium, with 14 partners who all have a long experience in the field of child safety. They have complementary profiles and were chosen for their high level of competence as regards crash investigations, test performance, computer simulations, experience on dummies and instrumentation, injury biomechanics, computer modelling and virtual testing.
Funding
Results
The CASPER project conducted a large research programme on safety. A lot of results are now available in many areas of child safety. Namely:
- Field studies from different countries on the use and misuse of child restraint systems.
- Accident data for restrained children.
- Injury criteria for frontal impact.
- The completion of the Q-family dummy models.
- A system to evaluate the protection of the abdomen for children in cars.
- Many work methodologies that have been improved during the life of the project.
Technical Implications
Q-child dummy model development;
- Models Q0, Q1, Q1,5, Q3, Q3s and Q6 have been developed.
Policy implications
As there is a continuous need of getting updates on field data, the methods were made public and will certainly be useful to other teams or to set basis of a new research project.
Strategy targets
1. An efficient and integrated mobilty sytem: 1.4 Acting on transport safety: saving thousands of lives.
Readiness
Some parts of the project have already been implemented, for other parts further research is necessary. Further investment is needed in child restraint systems and environment models to achieve predictive models.