Nearside occupants in side impact crashes often sustain severe injuries resulting in significant economic burden. Continual advancements in safety technology, including reinforced door structures, torso and head curtain air bags, compatibility improvements and other advancements, attempt to provide increased protection to occupants in these side impact crashes. Despite these advancements, serious injuries continue to occur at low delta-V's. In this paper, detailed analysis of field crash data will show which factors have the most influence on occupant outcome in these side impact crashes.

One-hundred and eighty-nine side impact crashes from the Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN), National Automotive Sampling System/Crashworthiness Data System (NASS/CDS), and Special Crash Investigation (SCI) databases were selected based on crash criteria including a delta-V below 40 km/h and a principal direction of force (PDOF) between 2 and 4 o'clock or 8 and 10 o'clock. Cases were also restricted to those in which the frontrow nearside occupant sustained an AIS 3+ injury to the head, torso, abdomen or lower extremity. Analyzing anatomical injury in conjunction with the vehicle damage patterns allows for the development of injury causation scenarios, which can speak directly to the interaction of the occupant and the components of the vehicle during the crash. These findings may identify trends which could be investigated for potential areas of improvement in future side impact testing and design of countermeasures.