Defining Body Regions by AIS© for Categorizing Injuries of Powered-Two-Wheelers

Finding countermeasures to reduce injury among Powered-Two-Wheeler (PTW) riders is of increasing interest to the global community. The first step in identifying and developing appropriate countermeasures to reduce injury is to understand the types and mechanisms of injury sustained by riders. In the EC funded PIONEERS project (Protective Innovations of New Equipment for Enhanced Rider Safety) [1] we are examining accident scenarios, use cases, riders’ injuries, the usage and performance of personal protective equipment (PPE) using technical and kinematic information from reconstructed accidents with the ultimate aim of developing enhanced protective technologies and on-board safety systems (OBSS) to reduce PTW casualties. The first phase of this project involved using data from European and Australian national and in-depth databases, to understand the nature of injury and mechanisms of injury to PTW riders for the purposes of developing countermeasures to injury across specific body regions [2]. To facilitate this there was a need to develop a common definition for Body Regions. However, there is no global (medical or other) definition of body region. Using the first digit of the AIS codes as body regions, categorised by chapters in the AIS code book [3], does not appear sufficient for countermeasure development for PTW riders. The aim of this work was therefore to identify a meaningful concept of body regions for preventing injury among PTW riders.