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Currently, one of the major challenges for automotive engineers is to provide additional protection to motor vehicle occupants involved in side-impact collisions. A considerable amount of research is being conducted into this problem by governments and motor vehicle manufacturers on a worldwide basis. Changes to the current safety standards relating to side impact protection have been proposed in both North America and Europe. The proposed standards involve the use of dummies in collisions between a moving barrier and a stationary test vehicle. A total of 22 side impact tests of production vehicles have been completed to date to assess the appropriateness of the test procedures developed in the U.S. and Europe in the context of the Canadian vehicle mix and associated side impact accident problem. Vehicle performance rankings provided by the two test procedures were found to vary greatly.

This paper discusses an attempt to relate measured loading at the head neck junction of arestrained six year old ATD during a frontal crash, to the mechanism of upper cervical fracture dislocation in young children. Lap belt, lap shoulder belt anda four point restraint system are considered. The basis for the reconstructions is the fatal injury to lap-belt restrained young children seated in the rear seat of contemporary minivans. The study concludes that simple forces and bending moments measured on such an ATD may not provide a sufficient basis for judging the likelihood of such an injury. Suggestions for a more comprehensive injury analysis are made.

The objectives of this study were to provide insights on how injury risk is influenced by occupant demographics such as sex, age, and size; and to quantify differences within the context of commonly-occurring real-world crashes. The analyses were confined to either single-event collisions or collisions that were judged to be well-defined based on the absence of any significant secondary impacts. These analyses, including both logistic regression and descriptive statistics, were conducted using the Crash Investigation Sampling System for calendar years 2017 to 2021. In the case of occupant sex, the findings agree with those of many recent investigations that have attempted to quantify the circumstances in which females show elevated rates of injury relative to their male counterparts given the same level bodily insult. This study, like others, provides evidence of certain female-specific injuries.