How injury criteria correlate with the injury risk:​ a study analysing different parameters with respect to whiplash injury

Muser, M.; Hell, W.; Schmitt, K.-U.

Affiliations

¹Working Group on Accident Mechanics, University and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland

²Institute for Vehicle Safety - GDV, Munich, Germany

³Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland

Abstract

This study analyses the significance of different injury criteria by comparing results obtained in sled test experiments to real world accident data.

Standard rear-end sled test conditions (sled velocity 16km/h, 6g trapezoidal pulse) and recent car seats were used in the tests. A BioRID and a RID 2 dummy were utilised. Various parameters including the head and neck acceleration, neck bending moments, the shear forces as well as the head-to-head restraint distance were derived from the tests. The neck injury criteria NICmax, Nkm and the rebound velocity were calculated.

In a next step, the results from the sled tests were compared with the risk of neck injury as determined from an accident data base. This data base contains several thousand files collected by a major German insurance company and records technical aspects as well as medical outcome (e.g. duration of symptoms). Thus, it was possible to specifically assign the neck injury risk to a certain seat tested in the sled tests.

Finally, the correlation of the injury risk with several of the parameters obtained from the sled tests is presented. It was observed that for the BioRID, the Nea component of the Nkm correlated best. Although for the NICmax a trend of increasing values for increasing injury risk was observed, the effect was less pronounced than for Nea. Using the RID 2, it was shown that the parameters analysed correlate in a similar fashion, but on different absolute levels. Consequently, it is recommended not to rely on a single criterion but to analyse different criteria in order to assess the protection potential of car seats in rearend collisions.

Links

URL: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv18/CD/Files/18ESV-000068.pdf

Cited Works (7)

Year	Entry
2002	Muser MH, Walz FH, Schmitt K-U. Injury criteria applied to seat comparison tests. Traffic Inj Prev. 2002;3(3):224-232.
2000	Muser MH, Walz FH, Zellmer H. Biomechanical significance of the rebound phase in low speed rear end impacts. In: Proceedings of the 2000 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact. September 20-22, 2000; Montpellier, France.411-424.
2002	Zellmer H, Muser M, Stamm M, Walz F, Hell W, Langwieder K, Philippens M. Comparison of rear impact dummies: Hybrid III (TRID), BioRID and RID2. In: Proceedings of the 2002 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact. September 18-20, 2002; Munich, Germany.
2000	Langwieder K, Hell W, Schick S, Muser M, Walz F, Zellmer H. Evolution of a dynamic seat test standard proposal for a better protection after rear-end impact. In: Proceedings of the 2000 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact. September 20-22, 2000; Montpellier, France.393-409.
1996	Boström O, Svensson MY, Aldman B, Hansson HA, Håland Y, Lövsund P, Seeman T, Suneson A, Säljö A, Örtengren T. A new neck injury criterion candidate based on injury findings in the cervical spinal ganglia after experimental neck extension trauma. In: Proceedings of the 1996 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact. September 11-13, 1996; Dublin, Ireland.123-136.
2002	Schmitt K-U, Muser MH, Walz FH, Niederer PF. N_km: a proposal for a neck protection criterion for low-speed rear-end impacts. Traffic Inj Prev. 2002;3(2):117-126.
1999	Hell W, Langwieder K, Walz F, Muser M, Kramer M, Hartwig E. Consequences for seat design due to rear end accident analysis, sled tests and possible test criteria for reducing cervical spine injuries after rear-end collision. In: Proceedings of the 1999 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact. September 23-24, 1999; Sitges, Spain.243-259.

Cited By (5)

Year	Entry
2010	Schmitt K-U, Niederer PF, Muser MH, Walz F. Trauma Biomechanics: Accidental Injury in Traffic and Sports. 2nd ed. Deidelberg, Germany: Springer; 2010.
2007	Eriksson L, Zellmer H. Assessing the BioRID II repeatability and reproducibility by applying the objective rating method (ORM) on rear-end sled tests. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 18-21, 2007; Lyon, France.
2003	Hell W, Höpfl F, Langwieder K, Lang D. Cervical spine distortion injuries in various car collision directions and injury incidence of different car types in rear-end collisions. In: Proceedings of the 2003 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact. September 25, 2003; Lisbon, Portugal.193-206.
2005	Cappon H, Hell W, Hoschopf H, Muser M, Song E, Wismans J. Correlation of accident statistics to whiplash performance parameters using the RID3D and BioRID dummy. In: Proceedings of the 2005 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact. September 21-23, 2005; Prague, Czech Republic.229-243.
2006	Ivancic PC. Cervical Spine Injury During Simulated Automobile Collisions [PhD thesis]. Yale University; May 2006.