Citation

Chapon A, Verriest JP, Trauchessec R. Proc. IRCOBI 1981; 9: 256-268.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1981, International Research Council on Biomechanics of Injury)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In the VAL transport system (Light automated vehicle for the urban transport system of the city of Lille) with a safety purpose in mind, the access to the vehicle has been made possible as it is for a lift thanks to a fully automatic drive and on account of the precision of stops in stations. The passengers are kept away from the track by a partition located at the platform edge and provided with sliding doors. The vehicle is equipped with similar sliding doors which come in front of those of the platform when the vehicle stops in the station. Under normal working conditions, the axes of vehicle and station doors coincide. However, an offset of 30 cm maximum between the vehicle and platform doors may be tolerated. In this case, the simultaneous closure of vehicle and station doors may induce a shearing type loading on the passenger remaining caught between. In particular, it could be thought that it would be the case for the upper limb mainly considering the space between door planes (about 20 cm) and the passenger behavior when coming in and out. Bending forces, even slight, applied to elbow and wrist joints, induce important loadings which may result in isolated or associated lesions such as sprains, dislocations or fractures. Therefore, the injury risk for the passenger had to be assessed in this configuration to decide whether the device had to be modified before putting the vehicle into service.