Since its foundation in 1956, the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM) has become the premier global professional organization dedicated to saving lives and eliminating injuries associated with road traffic crashes. The celebration of the Annual Conference, which comes now to its 60th edition, has always been a crucial moment for the Association in which professionals from all the disciplines involved in road traffic crash and injury prevention from all over the world get together to share the latest research and innovations.
This is the third time that AAAM partners with Traffic Injury Prevention to publish the papers, short communications, and posters submitted to the annual conference. As on the previous two occasions, the publication of the conference contents in a prestigious international journal ensures that the research presented at the conference benefits the traffic control community at large.
AAAM was founded by a group of medical doctors who fell in love with the automotive world and believed that they had to contribute to improving traffic safety. It is only fair that AAAM look back to its medical origin in the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Association. This is the reason why the AAAM Annual Conference was organized to follow the Annual Conference of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma and to reach out to trauma surgeons with interest in the prevention of road traffic injuries. An important number of papers included in this special issue focus on improved injury scores and severity thresholds for different body regions as well as on including functional loss as one of the key aspects of injury prevention.
Autonomous driving is already a reality that demands a change in the traditional approach to prevent passenger and rider injuries from the road injury control community. New technologies make use of advanced sensors to minimize the risk of collision and injury. While some of these technologies are already implemented, it is essential to have continuous assessment of their effectiveness in real-world situations. Naturalistic studies that allow us to understand the behavior of passengers during the collision or evaluations of active systems (such as Autonomous Emergency Braking or Intersection Driver Assistance Systems) will be discussed during the Conference.
Lastly, the AAAM Annual Conference has become a forum in which some of the most cutting-edge biomechanical research is presented to the scientific community. Volunteer, cadaveric, and computational models are used to improve our understanding of the kinematics and injury causation of human beings in real-world crashes. And, as in previous years, AAAM pays special attention to those road users who are most vulnerable.
This special issue would not have been possible without the collaboration of the members of the Scientific Program Committee of AAAM and other external reviewers from Traffic Injury Prevention who volunteered their time to ensure that the manuscripts included here were of the highest scientific quality.
In the end, everything counts when it comes to saving lives and preventing injuries. We sincerely hope that this special issue contributes to that end.