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Motor Vehicle safety regulations in the United States and other industrialized countries have evolved over the last three decades in order to meet the demands for increased traffic safety. The safety regulations that exist today are, in many respects, not harmonized. Because multiplicity of vehicle safety requirements do not allow manufacturers to use common vehicle designs across global markets and because the motor vehicle industry is more globalized now, there is the need for harmonized regulations more so now than ever before. At the same time, safety concerns related to human injuries and fatalities in passenger vehicles are similar in industrialized countries where a large number of vehicles are in use for transportation, in spite of differences in fleets and roadways. This paper examines the regulatory processes in the United States and Europe. It presents a cursory analysis of the existing vehicle safety standards to show the potential for harmonization.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) upgraded the side impact protection requirement in Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 214 and added dynamic requirements to reduce the likelihood of thoracic injuries in side crashes. As part of the agency's research in developing the requirements of the standard, NHTSA developed a mathematical model for simulation of side impacts. This paper investigates the overall safety performance, based on Thoracic Trauma Index (TTI) as the criteria for passenger cars in real world side crashes, with the aid of the simulation model. A Thoracic Trauma Index Factor (TTIF) is utilized to compare relative safety performance of passenger cars under various conditions of impact. The concept of relating energy dissipation in various side structure and padding countermeasures is used to develop a family of curves that are representative of a design platform.

Since the 1984 publication of the results of NHTSA's initial research on thoracic side impact protection, substantial progress has been made. Specifically, the NASS data have been reviewed relative to side impacts, an updated injury criterion has been developed, the MVMA has conducted a very significant crash test project, and the NHTSA has conducted additional full system production vehicle tests. The review of the NASS data and a comparison with the previously used NCSS data indicate the thoracic injury remains the highest ranking injury in non-rollover, non-ejection side impacts. The updated injury criterion, TTI-86, is applied to the side impact dummies in the modified vehicle tests which have been conducted by NHTSA and MVMA. The TTI-86 is also applied to twenty production vehicle tests which have been conducted by NHTSA. The improved performance of the modified vehicles is compared to the average performance of the twenty production vehicles.