Trinity Hosts International Conference on Injury Biomechanics

Posted on: 18 September 2012

How do injuries occur and how can they be prevented? Whether talking about what happens on football pitches, lonely country roads or a 10-lane highway, those are the key questions concerning those involved in injury biomechanics. With that in mind, this year the International Research Council on Biomechanics of Injury (IRCOBI)  brought together engineers, medics, accident investigators and others at a two-day conference hosted by Trinity College College to further our understanding of incidents that happen on roads and during sports.  The ultimate goal of the conference was to create a safer environment for society through better vehicle design, better protective equipment and a safer sporting environment.

This year’s conference which was organised by Dr Ciaran Simms of the School of Engineering and the Trinity Centre for Bioengineering focused on vulnerable road user safety and soft tissue characterisation. The conference was opened by Professor Jeff Crandall, the president of the IRCOBI,  who is a director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Applied Biomechanics, one of the largest in the world. The keynote speech was given by David Ward, the director general of the FIA Foundation for the Automobile and Society in the UK where he  looked at motor vehicle safety standards and the importance of ensuring that all new cars worldwide meet the United Nations’ basic crash test standards for front and side impact. Dr Brian Farrell, the Dublin City Coroner, who is charged with the legal responsibility for investigating sudden, unexplained and unnatural deaths in his district also spoke and  presented  a coroner’s perspective of critical injuries.

Other speakers included Dr Anne Rizzo from Inova Health in Virginia, US who presented results from one of the largest accident databases available, the Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN). Stephen Ridellafrom the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the US addressed the conference on the topic of age-related injury risk, which is important as little is known about how age and the interaction between age and other factors, such as gender or BMI, affect injury mechanisms and causation.

The conference was funded by Science Foundation Ireland.