Ambulance crashworthiness and occupant dynamics in vehicle-to-vehicle crash tests:​ preliminary report

Levick, Nadine Robyn; Donnelly, Bruce Richard; Blatt, Alan; Gillespie, George; Schultze, Mike

Affiliations

²United States, Center for Transportation Injury Research

³Crew Systems, Naval Air Warfare Center, Patuxent River

Abstract

There are no dynamic safety testing standards specifically for ambulance vehicles in the USA. These vehicles have also been identified to have high crash injury and fatality rates per mile, with a majority of the fatalities involving either an intersection or a frontal crash. This study is an interim report on work in progress which demonstrates occupant safety and crashworthiness of ambulance vehicles in vehicle to vehicle intersection type crash tests. The ambulance vehicles were configured with instrumented ATDs to represent 95th percentile male, 5th percentile female and 3 year child occupants. A ‘real world’ configuration of these ATDs and some medical equipment was established for a frontal and side impact crash test. The findings demonstrated life threatening safety hazards for all occupants. Also measured crash pulses for both the vehicle and the interior components were obtained. The urgent need for improvements to ambulance crash safety standards and designs are discussed.

Links

URL: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-01/Esv/esv17/Proceed/00012.pdf

Cited By (5)

Year	Entry
2005	Levick NR, Swanson J. An optimal solution for enhancing ambulance safety: implementing a driver performance feedback and monitoring device in ground emergency medical service vehicles. In: 49th Annual Proceedings, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM). September 12-14, 2005; Boston, MA.35-50.
2007	Levick N, Grzebieta R. Development of proposed crash test procedures for ambulance vehicles. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 18-21, 2007; Lyon, France.
2007	Levick N, Grzebieta R. Crashworthiness analysis of three prototype ambulance vehicles. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 18-21, 2007; Lyon, France.
2007	Levick N, Wiersch L, Nagel ME. Real world application of an aftermarket driver human factors real time auditory monitoring and feedback device: an emergency service perspective. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 18-21, 2007; Lyon, France.
2009	Levick N, Grzebieta R. USA ambulance crashworthiness frontal impact testing. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 15-18, 2009; Stuttgart, Germany.