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This is a summary of a paper which first appeared in the International Journal of Crashworthiness under the title: “Side Impact Protection - Occupants in the Far-Side Seat”, Vol. 3, No.2, pp 93-122. Readers are directed to the full paper for a more comprehensive discussion of the issues presented here. Much of the applied vehicle side impact occupant protection research to date has concentrated on occupants seated beside the struck side of vehicles. These occupants are defined as ‘near-side’ occupants. Real world crash evidence however has shown that occupants seated on the side away from the struck side, defined as ‘far-side’ occupants, are still subject to a risk of injury. This paper examines side impact epidemiology from an injury causation perspective, and endeavours to explain evidence indicating head injuries and seat belt related injuries constitute a significant proportion of all far-side impact injuries.

The need for a consumer information on car safety is growing steadily. Up to now, the consumer information about crash-tested new cars has been provided, but this should be supplemented by safety ratings based on real-world accidents which reflect all types of accident circumstances. The possibilities and limits of the necessary ""Quality Criteria for the Safety Assessment of Cars based on Real- World Crashes'' are analyzed in an EU project in cooperation of research institutes, industry and universities. The paper summarizes the results of three major objectives within this ""SARAC'' project. - The existing rating procedures worldwide have been analyzed and are described by their methods and the assessment criteria/crash parameters used.

Vehicle crash compatibility is of major interest in road safety research as it focuses on both vehicle crashworthiness and aggressivity. Most of the research into vehicle safety to date has focused on vehicle crashworthiness promoting vehicle designs that overlook the protection of occupants in the ‘other’ vehicle in a vehicle-to-vehicle collision. Most recently this issue has lead to the development of new methods of vehicle aggressivity rating. This study presents two proposed vehicle aggressivity rating methods. The ‘subject’ car aggressivity is estimated based on injury outcome to the driver of the ‘other’ vehicle involved in a two-vehicle collision. The logistic regression technique is applied in order to adjust risk of driver injury for a number of endogenous and exogenous factors. The ability of the methods to ‘rate’ vehicle models in terms of their aggressivity performance in two-vehicle crashes is briefly described.