Safety products such as CRS will only guarantee their full safety function if they are used according to the instructions of the manufacturers. The safety function will be affected if a safety product is misused by the consumer. Product failures like excessive head excursion, abdominal loading etc. are criteria that are subject to standard testing and - different to misuse may be detected and prevented before the product is put into use.

The misuse criterion is rather vague, subjective and not subject to quantitative assessment. The effects of CRS being misused may be severe, as published by a number of authors (Petrucelli, 1986;​ Shellness/Jewett, 1983;​ Weber/Melvin, 1983;​ Ziegler, 1983).

The target of this work is trying to find systematic expert procedures to predict, assess and hopefully reduce or eliminate the risk of misuse.