Multiple impact crashes - consequences for occupant protection measures

Much analysis of accident data and most crash tests focus on single impacts. However, in reality, multiple impacts account for a large proportion of serious injury accidents and are expected to become a larger proportion as countermeasures, developed primarily for single mode impacts, take effect. It is proposed that multiple impacts should be considered separately since consideration of their characteristics may have implications for occupant protection. This study investigates multiple impacts in more detail and, in particular, explores their relative importance in the accident population, analyses their characteristics and discusses some possible consequences for occupant protection measures

The effect of frontal airbags on belted driver injury patterns in Europe and the U.S. - where do future priorities lie?

Injury patterns by body region were compared for belted drivers who had sustained at least one moderate or greater injury (MAIS 2+ belted drivers) in airbag equipped and non-airbag cars. For airbag equipped cars, both European and US data showed about a 30% decrease in the fraction of these drivers who sustained AIS 2+ head injuries. European data found little difference in the relative frequency of AIS 2+ chest injury and cervical strain, whereas U.S. data showed a decreased frequency of AIS 2+ chest injury for MAIS 2+ belted drivers in airbag equipped cars. Both European and U.S. data show a substantially increased frequency of AIS 2+ upper limb injury for these drivers. AIS 2+ shoulder injuries contributed significantly to the increase. U.K., U.S. and German data show only a very small risk of head injury for all belted drivers in the no-deployment condition. On the other hand, European data suggests that the airbag appears to have little effect on injury outcome below 30 km/h delta v for all belted drivers. Currently, the North American experience of frontal airbag field performance is more extensive than it is in Europe. This is a consequence of their much earlier introduction into the car fleet. U.S. field studies show that airbags are effective in reducing occupant fatality by 31% in purely frontal crashes (NHTSA, 1996). Studies have also looked at effectiveness related specifically to airbag and belt combinations, belt only and airbag only

Assessment of injury severity of nearside occupants in pole impacts to side of passenger cars in European traffic accidents - analysis of German and UK in-depth data

The national accident statistics demonstrate that the situation of passenger car side impacts is dominated by car to car accidents. Car side to pole impacts are relatively infrequent events. However the importance of car side to pole impacts is significantly increasing with fatal and seriously injured occupants. For the present study the German in-depth database GIDAS (German In-Depth-Accident Study) and the UK database CCIS (Co-operative Crash Injury Study) were used. Two approaches were undertaken to better understand the scenario of car to pole impacts. The first part is a statistical analysis of passenger car side to pole impacts to describe the characteristics and their importance relevant to other types of impact and to get further knowledge about the main factors influencing the accident outcome. The second part contains a case by case review on passenger cars first registered 1998 onwards to further investigate this type of impact including regression analysis to assess the relationship between injury severity and pole impact relevant factors