Data Acquisition Architecture for Car Simulators: Application in Driving Adaptations for Disabled

R oad safety is a major public health problem in developed countries. Each year, around 1.2 million people die in the road traffic system (around 3000 per day) and more than 50 million are injured worldwide. About 2% of all deaths from any cause are related to traffic injuries, and about 23% of all injury deaths are caused by traffic accidents. Globally, there is a factor of around 40 between the number of injuries and the number of fatalities. The European Council of Ministers of Transport (ECMT) in Bucharest in 2002 unanimously adopted a common quantitative target for all member countries to reduce the 2000 road fatality level by 50% by 2012. Similarly, the European Commission agreed on a target of 50% reduction in the number of road fatalities by the year 2010, compared with 2001. The social and human costs of all these road crashes are about US$518 billion every year. For this reason, the United Nations (UN) and the World Health Organization (WHO) pleads for effective and sustainable road traffic safety policies. Many countries give high priority to road traffic safety, with ambitious targets set for the upcoming years.1 Road traffic accidents in the Member States of the European Union annually claim about 43,000 lives and leave more than 1.8 million people injured, representing estimated costs of 160 billion euros.2