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Front-to-rear crashes between vehicles at speeds well below 20 mph account for a surprisingly large number of significant injuries, usually classified as Whiplash Associated Disorders (WAD). Although an efficient model or process that relates the vehicle-to-vehicle collision conditions and parameters to the level and characteristics of injury is desirable, the complexity of the problem makes such an overall crash-to-injury model impractical. Instead, this paper develops and explores a reasonably effective model of the vehicle-to-vehicle impact that determines the forward/rearward accelerations, velocities and the contact force as functions of time for both the striking and struck vehicles. Tire drag due to braking is included to allow the assessment of its effects. Each vehicle is given a single degree of freedom consisting of translation of the center of gravity in the direction of vehicle heading.

Little experimental data have been reported in the crash reconstruction literature regarding high-speed sideswipe collisions. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) conducted a series of high-speed, small overlap, vehicle-to-barrier and vehicle-to-vehicle crash tests for which the majority resulted in sideswipe collisions. A sideswipe collision is defined in this paper as a crash with non-zero, final relative tangential velocity over the vehicle-to-barrier or vehicle-to-vehicle contact surface; that is, sliding continues throughout the contact duration. Using analysis of video from 50 IIHS small overlap crash tests, each test was modeled using planar impact mechanics to determine which were classified as sideswipes and which were not. The test data were further evaluated to understand the nature of high-speed, small overlap, sideswipe collisions and establish appropriate parameter ranges that can aid in the process of accident reconstruction.