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The potential impact of real world accident scenarios on fuel cell vehicles equipped with a compressed hydrogen storage system is analyzed from a component point of view. Even though hydrogen compressed gas tanks can sustain very high loads, in this study a simplification is made. It is investigated to what extent different real world accident scenarios with conventional vehicles have caused deformation of the vehicle in the area where a hydrogen tank would have been integrated in a fuel cell vehicle. The study is based on accident data from the GIDAS (German In-Depth Accident Study) database. Deformation matrices for each passenger car in the database are defined over a deformation grid largely independent of vehicle type and shape. The matrices are combined to statistically analyze the occurrence of deformations in selected regions of a vehicle.

Starting directly at the scene of the accident facts about 127 motorized and 136 non-motorized- two-wheel accidents that occurred in Hanover, West Germany, have been collected and analysed. These accidents were analysed case by case and in this publication, an attempt is made to provide a survey with regard to the collision mechanism and the injuries sustained by the involved cyclist. Measures to reduce the number of accidents as well as to influence the course of the accidents, are shown. The characteristic injury patterns and kinematic motions provide the guidelines for further security measures and serve as the basis for experimental tests.