NHTSA’s improved frontal protection research program

Stucki, Sheldon L.; Hollowell, William T.

Affiliations

¹National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, United States

Abstract

In the United States, within the next few years air bags will be required in all passenger cars and light trucks under Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMV SS) No. 208, Occupant Crash Protection. Even after full implementation of driver and passenger air bags as required by FMVSS No. 208, frontal impacts will still account for up to 8,000 fatalities and 120,000 moderate to critical injuries (.i.e., injuries of AIS ≥ 2) [1]. The National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) has an ongoing research program to address these fatalities and injun'es and provide a basis for the possible future upgrade of FMVSS No. 208. This includes developing supplementary test procedures for the evaluation of occupant injury in higher severity crashes, developing improved injury criteria including criteria for assessing injuries to additional body regions, and evaluating the injuries associated with occupant size [2-4].

More recently, in monitoring the fleet performance of current air bag systems, NHTSA has identified aggressive air bag deployment as a potential cause of injuries and fatalities of occupants in minor severity crashes. Accordingly, the agency has added new activities to investigate this finding in its frontal crash protection research program

This paper presents an overview of the agency's overall research program Selected results from the testing conducted to date are discussed. Finally, a discussion is presented toward improving occupant protection systems in frontal crashes.

Cited Works (2)

Year	Entry
1994	Hollowell WT, Hitchcock RJ. Improved frontal impact crash test data. In: Proceedings of the 14th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 23-26, 1994; Munich, Germany.1372-1376.
1994	Haffner M, Kleinberger M, Eppinger R, Hennessey BC, Pritz H, Beebe M, Hagedorn AV, Klinich KD, Ore L, Tanner CB, Kuppa S. Progress in the development of new frontal dummy components for the NHTSA advanced frontal protection program. In: Proceedings of the 14th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 23-26, 1994; Munich, Germany.1405-1419.

Cited By (3)

Year	Entry
1998	Stucki SL, Hollowell WT, Fessahaie O. Determination of frontal offset test conditions based on crash data. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 31–June 4, 1998; Windsor, Ontario, Canada.164-184.
1998	Ragland CL. Offset test procedure development and comparison. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 31–June 4, 1998; Windsor, Ontario, Canada.185-193.
2003	Saeki H, Maki T, Miyasaka H, Ueda M. A fundamental study of frontal oblique offset impacts. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 19-22, 2003; Nagoya, Japan.