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The introduction of occupant position sensors into automobiles raises questions about the response of these sensors to the child crash test dummies and the relationship of these responses to those of child human subjects. This paper extends earlier work on the small female and mid-sized male Hybrid IIIs to new work on the 6-year-old Hybrid III. Testing was conducted with 6 year-old children human volunteer subjects using three sensor technologies, capacitive, electric field, and ultrasonic. This testing was conducted in the laboratory with the sensors mounted at the face/chest level of the children. The capacitive and electric field sensor responses to the 6 year-old Hybrid III and children were more similar than the response of the sensors to the 5th percentile female and 50th percentile male Hybrid III crash test dummies to the comparable adult human subjects.

Ambulances have different performance needs and structural design compared to standard passenger vehicles. Also occupants in the ambulance rear patient compartment maybe side facing, rear facing or recumbent. There is also no USA dynamic safety standard for testing the ambulance patient compartment occupant or equipment restraint systems. This study describes an accelerator sled test conducted of an ambulance rear cabin environment which demonstrates some optimal restraint practices for pediatric patients and also the interaction between the different occupants and the need for effective restraint systems. The goal of this study was to analyze occupant kinematics and forces generated in a model of an ambulance crash, and to test injury-mitigating countermeasures for both pediatric and adult occupants.