The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN) provides detailed outcome and patient care information for a sample of seriously injured case occupants involved in motor vehicle crashes. NHTSA’s National Automotive Sampling System-Crashworthiness Data System (NASS-CDS) provides a population-based sample of tow-away crashes that includes both non-injured and seriously injured occupants. This study combines the strengths of CIREN and NASS-CDS to produce predictive models that relate occupant and vehicle measures to treatment and occupant outcomes.

Qualifying frontal impact cases from CIREN involving seriously injured driver and/or front outboard passengers were used to evaluate the significance of the relationship between vehicle crash/occupant parameters and hospital treatment/outcome. A subset of CIREN cases where event data recorder (EDR) information was obtained was also analyzed. Regression analyses were done to assess the significance of predicted variables with regards to the outcomes of interest. Using significant predictors, a set of functions were developed that predict the probabilities of an occupant going to the intensive care unit (ICU), experiencing invasive surgery (OR) within 12 and 24 hours of the crash, or fatality given serious injury. NASS-CDS cases meeting the same CIREN crash and occupant inclusion criteria were used to establish the probability of serious injury given a qualifying frontal impact. This study has shown that the NASS-CDS-based probability of serious injury and the CIREN-based probability of seeing various outcomes given serious injury can be combined to form models that estimate the joint probability that a case occupant involved in a qualifying frontal crash would see an outcome of interest (ICU, OR, or fatality).