Over the past several years, NHTSA has conducted testing to evaluate a high-speed fixed offset deformable barrier crash test. It was preliminarily determined that the benefits from such a crash test could lead to an annual reduction in approximately 1,300 to 8,000 MAIS 2+ lower extremity injuries. NHTSA also conducted vehicle-to-vehicle crash tests to investigate the potential for disbenefits from a fixed offset deformable barrier crash test. This testing demonstrated that, for some sport utility vehicles, structural changes that improved their performance in high-speed frontal offset crash tests may also result in adverse effects on the occupants of their collision partners.

The Directorate for Road Traffic and Safety (DSCR) of France developed and proposed a Progressive Deformable Barrier test procedure (PDB) to upgrade the current offset deformable barrier test procedure in the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) R.94 regulation. DSCR is proposing the PDB to potentially improve the barrier performance in testing of the current and future fleet. Therefore, NHTSA is investigating the use of the PDB in the offset test procedure by comparing the current offset deformable barrier test procedure specified in FMVSS No. 208 (ODB) to the PDB. This paper also investigates the performance of each barrier to predict lower extremity injuries and the ability of the PDB to absorb more energy for heavy vehicles found in the United States (U.S.) fleet.

The PDB performed as designed for heavy vehicles and produced approximately the same occupant compartment intrusions. Both the ODB and PDB did not produce the same lower extremity injuries as seen in the real-world.

The general trend across each body region had a similar trend for each barrier. That is the magnitude of each IAV for each body region was approximately the same for each barrier, but one barrier is not always the maximum.