Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine
The Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine ( AAAM ) is an association of doctors and technicians whose aim, in addition to increasing road safety, is also to promote biomechanical research. In addition to the annual specialist congresses, the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) , a measuring system for describing individual injuries, is his best-known product. The association is chaired by Mary Pat McKay.
history
The eight motor racing enthusiasts doctors Hal Fenner, Bill Gibson, Jack Knight, Abe Mirkin, Werner fur, George Snively, Paul Wallace and Tom Waring formed in 1957, Medical Advisory Committee '(German: medical advisory board) of the Sports Car Club of America , a up to that point, a more technically oriented association of racing enthusiasts.
At the Sebring 12-hour race in 1957, the group changed its name to the American Association for Automotive Medicine (AAAM) and elected Abe Mirkin as its president. In addition to reducing motor racing injuries, the group's aim was also to reduce traffic accident injuries in general. To this end, the association, in particular through the medical associations of the federal states, acted on physicians in private practice. From 30 members in 1959, the number rose to 178 doctors in 1964. At this point it became apparent that an interdisciplinary approach was needed to achieve the goals. Therefore, full membership was also made possible for non-doctors, as long as their goals coincided with those of the AAAM. From 264 members in 1968, their number rose to over 500 by 1977. At the 1978 annual meeting, the culture of the ad hoc working groups was transformed into a permanent structure of “Human Factors”, “Vehicles” and “Environment” sections.
To better represent the international claim of its work, the AAAM renamed itself in 1983 to its current name.
Scientific work
Annual scientific conference
Since the year it was founded, the AAAM has held an annual scientific conference. Starting with the third conference, the presented work was published in a conference proceedings. In a few years the conferences were held together with other, technically similar conferences, the Stapp Car Crash Conference (1961–1963), IRCOBI (1994, 1999 and 2003).
Symposia, courses and conferences
With the International Symposium on Occupant Restraint in Toronto , Canada, the AAAM tried in 1981 to scientifically underpin the campaign for seatbelts and seatbelt compulsory on the North American continent. Further symposia on head injury mechanisms, aging drivers and strategies for avoiding injuries in road traffic followed. The first courses on 'Impact Biomechanics' (German: Biomechanics of blunt violence) were held in 1984 and repeated several times over the years. On behalf of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) , the AAAM hosted the second world conference on 'Injury Control' in 1993. In 2001, the AAAM organized a conference on 'Booster Seats': research on restraint systems for children who had already outgrown the classic child seat but whose stature did not yet fit into seats with normal seat belts should be initiated.
'Traffic Injury and Prevention'
In addition to magazines geared more towards club news, here in chronological order: Quarterly , Journal , Bulletin , Traffic Lines and today Inroads , a separate scientific publication was sought. After initial attempts with the Journal of Occupational Medicine and the Journal of Trauma , there was a collaboration with the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention for several years from 1988 . In 1999, the AAAM founded Crash Prevention and Injury Control, its first own scientific publication, which was renamed Traffic Injury and Prevention in 2002 .
Abbreviated Injury Scale
According to its own information, the AAAM took on the driving role in the further development of the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) in 1973. The 1976 edition was jointly published by the American Medical Association (AMA) , Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and he AAAM. From the AIS version in 1980, AAAM was solely responsible for the further development.
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ List of the chairmen of the AAAM ( Memento of February 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ https://www.aaam.org/about/history/