Knowledge from real-world crashes is important in the design of a crashworthy road transportation system. Such design must be based on the human injury tolerance limits. Links between impact severity and injury outcome are important and could be used in order to achieve such tolerance limits. Traditionally impact severity has been calculated with retrospective reconstruction technique, although recently, injury risk functions have been presented where impact severity has been measured with crash pulse recorders.

The aims of this paper were to present injury risk functions, with special reference to neck injuries, calculated with crash recorder and paired comparison technique, and to propose a way of combining the two methods. By combining comprehensive statistical material with in depth crash recorder information, injury risk functions for injuries to different body regions were established. Risk functions for AIS1 neck injuries both in frontal and rear-end impacts have also been established.

It was found that the data from the crash pulse recorder generated risk functions could be used to validate and calibrate risk functions based on the matched-paired technique. Moreover, it was found that the shape of the injury risk curves differed significantly for injuries to different body regions. It was also found that the neck injury risk differed significantly for frontal and rear-end impacts.

It is concluded, that adding new techniques to the existing techniques based on reconstruction can further refine generating risk functions. The injury risks found are important for the understanding of injury tolerance limits for injuries to different body regions, but also for the understanding of injury mechanisms for different injury types.