ABSTRACT
Short-duration accelerations resulting in injury or death can be inflicted not only on the occupants of vehicles involved in crashes, but also on pedestrians, sports participants, people falling from heights and those exposed to explosions and bomb blasts. Injuries may be received when someone in motion comes into collision with a solid object or when an object or missile strikes a stationary person. Irrespective of the circumstances surrounding the accident, injury occurs when a person is exposed to forces of a critical magnitude for a brief period of time, and the degree of injury is related to the magnitude and duration of the applied forces. The study of impact injury can be summarized as what we hit, how we hit it, how long we hit it for, how many times we hit it, and which part of the body is hit. Before introducing injury-reduction programmes, it is necessary to understand how accidents cause injuries, the nature of the forces contributing to the injuries, and the characteristics of the type of accident under consideration.
