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This book contains 28 landmark papers, providing a comprehensive look at event data recorder (EDR) technology for cars, light trucks, and heavy vehicles. By collecting EDR data, vehicle safety trends can be established, providing car companies, researchers, and regulators with science-based methods to better understand vehicle crashes. In addition to classic and cutting-edge papers, the book features insightful materials on the new National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Final Rule on Event Data Recorders (49 CFR, Part 563), including the rule itself, a summary, and the response to petitions for reconsideration.

For years, reducing the number of traffic-related fatalities and injuries has been a major problem throughout the world. Today, it has gained much more momentum in view of rapidly increasing SUV, van, and light-truck populations relative to the number of passenger cars, and due to significant improvements in technologies that facilitate a better understanding of the interaction dynamics among widely differing size vehicles. Unless disparities in crashworthiness among vehicles of different masses, sizes, and structural characteristics in mixed crash environments are successfully taken into account, the challenge toward improved vehicle safety will continue. This two-part compendium provides the most comprehensive information available on the entire spectrum of vehicle crash compatibility. The first part presents oral comments captured from the 2003 SAE World Congress panel discussion on compatibility.