Strategies to optimise car safety for real-world collisions

Thomas, Pete

Affiliations

¹Vehicle Safety Research Centre, Loughborough University, United Kingdom

Abstract

The concept of risk of injury is introduced and used to illustrate a number of crash scenarios. Injuries are shown to be a consequence of both risk and exposure. The separation of the injury risk and exposure curves by the reduction in injury risk for common conditions is seen as one goal of the vehicle safety engineer. Single point testing is compared with a population ‘approach and the scenario of good performance in a crash test and poor performance overall is illustrated. Both high and lower speed testing is recommended to control injury risks across the collision severity spectrum. Higher speed crash testing has the potential to reduce intrusion related injuries considerably in frontal crashes with the possibility of these being partially offset by an increase in lower speed acceleration injuries. Real-world crash injury data is evaluated to quantify injury risks. Fatal injuries are shown to be sustained with a median EES of 70 km/h and substantial reductions are not anticipated following the 1998 Front impact Directive. A range of other factors contributing to injury severity in real world crash victims is identified. Finally measurement of injury risk curves of current car models is suggested as a method to further develop the practical application of injury risk management.

Cited Works (3)

Year	Entry
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Cited By (4)

Year	Entry
1999	Thomas P, Frampton R. Large and small cars in real-world crashes: patterns of use, collision types and injury outcomes. In: 43rd Annual Proceedings, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM). September 20-21, 1999; Barcelon, Spain.101-118.
1998	Lenard J, Hurley B, Thomas P. The accuracy of CRASH3 for calculating collision severity in modern European cars. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 31–June 4, 1998; Windsor, Ontario, Canada.1242-1249.
2006	Pipkorn B, Mellander H, Olsson J, Håland Y. On the combined effect of the variation of driver restraint configuration and crash pulse for high and very high impact velocities. In: Proceedings of the 2006 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact. September 20-22, 2006; Madrid, Spain.199-211.
2002	Thomas P, Frampton R. Car size in U.K. crashes: the effects of user characteristics, impact configuration, and the patterns of injury. Traffic Inj Prev. 2002;3(4):275-282.