Road
transport deaths and injuries have been a byproduct of
increased motorisation since the introduction of the motor
car; but had gone largely unnoticed by policymakers until
three decades ago. In 1966, the United States Congress
enacted the Highway Safety and the Motor Vehicle Safety
Acts, and established a federal Department of Transportation
to implement the standards and regulations which followed
from those laws.
Later
in 1968, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) appointed a research group on road
safety made up of representatives from Belgium, Canada,
France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United
Kingdom and the United States. The group's report, "Biomechanics
of Automobile Accidents", published in October 1969,
proposed five co-operative programmes. As a first step
to implementation of these programmes, an international
survey found that research in biomechanics was ongoing
in several countries around the world, especially in Europe
and the United States.
Therefore,
a small group of researchers from different European countries
agreed to combine two programmes one on accident biomechanics
and the other on human tolerance to impact into the science
of the kinematics of impact injuries. These deliberations
resulted in the formation of the International Research
Committee on the Biokinetics of Impact (IRCOBI) under
the leadership of Prof. Bertil Aldman who chaired IRCOBI
for almost 20 years. In 1992, this group changed its name
to the International Research Council on the Biomechanics
of Injury to reflect more accurately its overall mission.
