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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 objective of the ISIP Project has been to develop a methodology to allow vehicle designers to optimize safety systems of vehicles in side impacts. This optimization was based on the minimization of the cost of injury or Harm. To form the link between the safety system protective capability in a crash and the cost of injury to the occupant required the development of a series of lateral impact Injury Assessment Functions (IAFs). These IAFs had to be able to predict the risk of injury, in AIS, for each of the major body regions of the occupant. The injury predictions were used to derive Harm for the crash and were based on the responses of a human surrogate, the BioSID. This paper describes the development of these lateral injury IAFs from the analysis of cadaver test data.

This paper includes an overview of a collaborative research project of Improved Side Impact Protection (ISIP) that commenced in 1997. The research program was sponsored by the Australian Research Council and involved a partnership of industry, government and research agencies, both in Australia and overseas. The overall aim was to develop a new approach to optimizing vehicle design using Harm as the main outcome criteria. The program involved a number of research activities including mass data analysis, in-depth real-world crash investigations, simulation modelling and the development of a family of Injury Assessment Functions. The paper outlines the structure and progress of these activities, summarizes the results and provides an overview of the optimizer model emanating from this research.

This paper provides a summary of preliminary results of three car-to-car 90-degree lateral impact crash tests with initially restrained Hybrid III and US-SID dummies. These tests comprised part of a collaborative research project between Monash University, Autoliv Australia and the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria. The overall research project objectives were to investigate the nature of non-struck side occupant injuries in automobile side impacts and to develop technical solutions to reduce these injuries. The test program results showed that a sash belt with a pretensioner and good geometry was effective in reducing occupant lateral excursions and lap belt loads. An increase in occupant neck loading was however observed and measured. Lateral torso seat restraints helped to prevent direct contacts between adjacent occupants resulting in a reduced HIC measured for a non-struck side occupant dummy.