Determination of the significance of roof crush on head and neck injury to passenger vehicle occupants in rollover crashes

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Rains, Glen C.¹; Kanianthra, Joseph N.¹

Determination of the significance of roof crush on head and neck injury to passenger vehicle occupants in rollover crashes

Proceedings of the SAE International Congress & Exposition

©1995 Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc.

Affiliations

¹National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Abstract

A comparative study between belted rollover occupants who did and did not receive head injuries from roof contact was conducted using the National Accident Sampling System (NASS) database. The main objective was to determine if headroom reduction increases the risk of head injury. Headroom was determined for 155 belted occupants involved in rollover crashes of vehicles which were then weighted to make them representative of national estimates. Results showed that headroom was reduced more in those crashes where the occupant had head injuries than in cases where there were no head injuries. It was concluded that the risk of head injury increased with reduced headroom. Furthermore, it was observed that when the initial headroom was higher, the incidence of head injury was reduced.
Links

DOI: 10.4271/950655

SAE: 950655

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Cited By (17)

Year	Entry
1995	Moffatt EA, Padmanaban J. The relationship between vehicle roof strength and occupant injury in rollover crash data. In: 39th Annual Proceedings, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM). October 16-18, 1995; Chicago, IL.245-267.
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2007	Hu J, Chou CC, Yang KH, King AI. A weighted logistic regression analysis for predicting the odds of head/face and neck injuries during rollover crashes. In: 51st Annual Proceedings, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM). October 15-17, 2007; Melbourne, Australia.363-379.
1996	Summers S, Rains GC, Willke DT. Current research in rollover and occupant retention. In: Proceedings of the 15th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 13-16, 1996; Melbourne, Australia.760-765.
1996	Friedman K, Friedman D. Improved vehicle design for the prevention of severe head and neck injuries to restrainted occupants in rollover accidents. In: Proceedings of the 15th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 13-16, 1996; Melbourne, Australia.856-865.
1998	Friedman D, Friedman K. Upper interior head, face and neck injury experiments. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 31–June 4, 1998; Windsor, Ontario, Canada.1772-1777.
1998	Rains G, Elias J, Mowry G. Evaluation of restraints effectiveness in simulated rollover conditions. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 31–June 4, 1998; Windsor, Ontario, Canada.1897-1908.
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2017	Ridella SA. The Contribution of Vehicle, Occupant and Crash Factors to the Risk of Injury as a Result of Vehicle Rollover: New Approaches to Data and Modeling Analysis [PhD thesis]. Gothenburg, Sweden: Chalmers University of Technology; 2017.
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