Research description

The aim of the research is to map parameters influencing the risk to be injured in road traffic accidents. The different projects are to a large extent based on accident data from Folksam, where an important source of information comes from crash pulse recorders, so called black boxes. They give information of the forces acting on the human in a crash. Together with data on injury outcome, detailed information of the car, the use of restraint systems and of how the road environment was designed, factors influencing the injury outcome are analyzed. The research is also based on more comprehensive data but with lower degree of detail, such as all crashes reported in Sweden reported by the police and hospitals (STRADA). These studies are more of an epidemiological kind.

Education

University education
Master of Science, Aeronautical Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, 1988.

Doctors degree
Thesis for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy, faculty of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, 1998.
Research area: Personal injuries in road traffic accidents.
Title: Validity and Reliability of Vehicle Collision Data: Crash Pulse recorders for Impact Severity and Injury Risk Assessments in Real-Life Frontal Collisions. 

Supervisors: Åke Nygren and Claes Tingvall.

Post doc
Post Doctoral Fellowship at Monash University Accident Research Centre, Melbourne, Australia, 1999-10-15 – 2000-04-14.

Associate Professor
Associate Professor at the Crash Safety Division of the Institution for Applied Mechanics at Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, 2002.

Professor
Professor in Traffic Safety at the Crash Safety Division of the Institution for Applied Mechanics at Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, 2011.

 

Academic honours, awards and prizes

Awards

  • “Guldhunden” from the company Cerberus in 1995. Every year the Swiss company Cerberus distributes the safety award. Cerberus is one of the largest manufacturers of automatic fire alarm systems. Folksams research department got the award with the motivation: Safety improving research regarding injury risks in road traffic accidents.
  • The “Bertil Aldman Award” for outstanding contributions to the subject on impact biomechanics, from the International Research Council on the Biomechanics of Injury (IRCOBI), 2008.