1National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, United States
In the United States, air bags will be required in all passenger cars and light trucks under Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 208, Occupant Crash Protection. Even after full implementation of driver and passenger air bags as required by FMVSS No. 208, frontal impacts will still account for up to 10,000 fatalities and 120,000 AIS ≥ 2 (i.e., moderate to critical) injuries. The objective of the research program is to address these fatalities and injuries and provide a basis for the possible future upgrade of FMVSS No. 208.
Injury criteria, test devices, and the development of supplementary test procedures for the evaluation of occupant injury will be addressed by investigating higher severity crashes, other occupant sizes, and additional body regions and/0r improved injury criteria. The performance of air bag equipped production cars is being evaluated; countermeasures will be developed and evaluated; and the benefits associated with the countermeasures will be assessed.
To date, a number of frontal offset crash tests using air bag equipped production cars have been conducted. The first test series involved moving car-to-car tests with a nominal 116 kmph (72 mph) closing speed and 60 percent engagement of the subject vehicle by the striking or bullet vehicle. A fiftieth percentile Hybrid III dummy was used as the test surrogate in the driver’s seating position.
In a second series, frontal offset tests were conducted similarly to the first series except that there were engagements of 50 and 70 percent of one of the subject vehicles. The tests were conducted to evaluate the effects of overlap percentage. An additional test was conducted in this series to evaluate the effect of an oblique impact on the subject vehicle.
Additional crash test evaluations include high speed full frontal rigid barrier impact tests. These tests included the use of the 5th and 95th percentile Hybrid III dummies.
This paper presents an overview of this research program and presents the results from the crash testing conducted to date.