Low speed frontal crashes and low speed rear crashes:​ is there a differential risk for injury?

Croft, Arthur C.; Haneline, Michael T.; Freeman, Michael D.

Affiliations

¹Spine Research Institute of San Diego, San Diego, California, USA

²Center for Research into Automotive Safety and Health, Spring Valley, California, USA

³Southern California University of Health Sciences, Dept. of Diagnostics, Whittier, California, USA

⁴Department of Health and Preventative Medicine, Oregon Health Sciences University School of Medicine, Portland, Oregon, USA

Abstract

We compared male and female subjects in crash tests in which each subject experienced both frontal and rear impacts. Crash speed and other crash parameters were held constant. We believe this was the first experiment using an independent variable of crash vector and dependent variables of head linear acceleration and volunteer qualitative tolerance. Analysis of data revealed that the rear impact vector crash resulted in 2.8 times greater head linear acceleration than frontal crashes. Rear impact crashes resulted in biphasic, complex kinematics compared to the monophasic, less complex frontal crashes. Rear impact crashes were rated markedly less tolerable. Sex-specific differences are also discussed.

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Cited By (1)

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2008	Bartsch AJ, Gilbertson LG, Prakash V, Morr DR, Wiechel JF. Minor crashes and "whiplash" in the United States. In: 52nd Annual Proceedings, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM). October 6-8, 2008; San Diego, CA.117-128.