Nonskeletal injuries, such as lesions to organs and ruptures to major vessel, pose the most significant "threat-to-life" resulting from thoracic impact. Previous human cadaver impact studies have concentrated on assessing the severity of human injury according to a cumulative AIS, which classifies skeletal and nonskeletal trauma on a common scale. In many situations skeletal injuries dominate the response picture and, as such, may have influenced ultimate interpretations of injury potential away from the less frequent nonskeletal trauma. In-depth statistical analyses of 52 cadaver tests, involving blunt thoracic impact, were conducted to delineate parametric dependencies for both nonskeletal (i.e., organ and vascular trauma) and skeletal injuries with biomechanical responses and specimen characteristics. Despite a demonstrated linear dependence between overall and skeletal injury severities on the level of normalized thoracic deflection, "life-threatening" injury seems more reasonably associated with a normalized deflection limit (P/D ~ 0.32). Deformation beyond this limit appears to trigger a structural instability and cause a collapse of the rib cage, which results in multiple rib fractures and a realistic hazard for intrathoracic organ and vascular injury. The latter encompass a spectrum of serious injury (AIS 3-6). Nonskeletal injury occurrences are also shown to be a statistically significant function of the specimen's age, level of normalized thoracic deflection and extensiveness of skeletal damage.