Project description
Evacuating injured bus passengers faster after accidents
Quick response time after a traffic accident is crucial for injured passengers, more so in bus accidents where the number of victims delay evacuation time. In Europe, for example, 30 000 bus passengers were severely injured in 2015 alone, according to World Health Organisation statistics. The E-RESCUE project involves a tool kit being installed at every bus seat. This kit can immobilise injured passengers and the whole seat can be extricated from the bus. This safety system will be extended to the car industry in the future, drastically reducing response time and hopefully contributing to fewer post-accident fatalities.
Objective
Buses are regarded as the safest vehicles in the road. However, each year terrible bus crashes are reported in the media.
According to the World Health Organization, about 84,500 people were killed on roads in Europe in 2015. Of this figure,
about 20,000 European buses and coaches were involved in crashes, with 30,000 bus occupants severely injured, and 150
occupants killed. A critical issue after a bus accident is the efficient rescue of victims. Bus collisions are considered mass
casualty incidents, with many victims involved (up to 80 passengers can travel in a bus). This implies that emergency
medical services resources, such as personnel and equipment, are overwhelmed by the number and severity of casualties.
As a result, the intervention times of emergency services can take too long (more than 2 h) and because the rescue time is
critical for survival, bus accidents typically end up with too many fatal victims or severely injured people. The E-RESCUE
project aims at introducing into the market the first post-accident safety system to facilitate the rescue of victims after a bus
accident and to reduce the emergency services' intervention time, thus increasing the victims’ chances of survival and
minimising injuries. This will be enabled thanks to our patented technology, which is the first in-vehicle system for the
immobilization and extrication of victims. E-RESCUE is the first system to be installed in all seat buses, so with ERESCUE
each passenger would have their own extrication system built into their seat.
Thanks to E-RESCUE the rescue time can be reduced up to 70% (30 min Vs 2 h) compared to conventional techniques used by emergency response teams.
Hence, E-RESCUE has the potential to reduce the fatal victims and severe injuries in bus occupants by more than 50% in bus
accidents.
The E-RESCUE changes for ever the way we rescue crash victims. It starts now in the bus industry and it will move forward to the car industry too.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
28440 GUADARRAMA
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.