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This study presents some results from a case-control study of crashed vehicles equipped with Australian airbag technology (Supplementary Restraint Systems). Vehicles were inspected and occupants interviewed according to the National Accident Sampling System (NASS). Data were available for 383 belted drivers involved in frontal crashes including 253 drivers in airbag-equipped vehicles and 130 drivers in non-airbag vehicles. The analysis revealed reductions in the numbers of injuries to the head, face, chest and neck in the airbag-equipped vehicles although the numbers of upper extremity injuries increased. At higher injury severities (AIS2+) reductions were also observed in injuries to the head, face, neck and chest. Further analysis using Harm as an outcome measure found that the mean Harm per driver (in terms of $AUD) were 60% greater in the non-airbag vehicles compared with the airbag-equipped vehicles.

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.

Previous studies have shown that both excessive linear and rotational accelerations are the cause of head injuries. Although the head injury criterion has been beneficial as an indicator of head injury risk, it only considers linear acceleration, so there is a need to consider both types of motion in future safety standards. Advanced models of the head/brain complex have recently been developed to gain a better understanding of head injury biomechanics. While these models have been verified against laboratory experimental data, there is a lack of suitable real-world data available for validation. Hence, using two computer models of the head/brain, the objective of the current study was to reconstruct four real-world crashes with known head injury outcomes in a full-vehicle crash laboratory, simulate head/brain responses using kinematics obtained during these reconstructions, and to compare the results predicted by the models against the actual injuries sustained by the occupant.