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In order to reduce the number and severity of injuries to child occupants in car accidents, a great number of child restraint systems have been developed over the past years. Such systems must be adapted to the anthropometric characteristics of children and provide good protection; to achieve this, a knowledge of child tolerance to impact is required, but at present very little biomechanical data relating to children is available, especially for children in the first years of life. As the design, evaluation and certification of child restraint systems is performed with dummies and several dummy types are available- a relationship between dummy and expected child reactions must be identified. This paper, based on the work performed within the framework of the International Task Force on Child Restraint Systems*, proposes a comparison between child dummies and cadavers involved in identical experimental collisions, and restrained with child restraint systems.

At present, numerous restraint systems for children applied in vehicles are in general considered for the use on the back seats. Up to now, only impact tests with dummies and animals have been carried through by these systems. Out of the great number of children seats and belts we used a system (deformable safety impact table combined with a lap-belt) which has been investigated by us during frontal impacts utilizing two dummies and four cadavers of children in the age of 2,5 up to 11 years having body weights of 16 up to 31 kg. The tests have been conducted on the deceleration-sled track at the Institute of Legal Medicine of the University Heidelberg. Impact velocities of 30 km/h and 40 km/h at a medium deceleration of 20g have been chosen. None of the test subjects showed injuries to the inner organs; however, numerous muscular hemorrhages as well as hemorrhages of discs and ligaments were noticed.