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The strength of the passenger compartment is crucial for occupant safety in severe car-to-car frontal offset collisions. Car-to-car crash tests including minicars were carried out, and a low end of crash force was observed in a final stage of impact for cars with large intrusion into the passenger compartment. From overload tests, the strength could be evaluated from collapsing the passenger compartment. Based on the test, the end of crash force as well as the maximum forces might be important criteria to determine the passenger compartment strength, which in turn could predict the large intrusion into the passenger compartment in car-to-car crashes. A 64 km/h ODB test was insufficient to evaluate the potential strength of the passenger compartment because the maximum forces could not be determined in this test.

Test procedures for evaluating vehicle compatibility were investigated based on accident analysis and crash tests. This paper summarizes the research reported by Japan to the IHRA Compatibility Working Group. Passenger cars account for the largest share of injuries in head-on collisions in Japan and were identified as the first target for tackling vehicle compatibility in Japan. To ascertain situations in collisions between vehicles of different sizes, we conducted crash tests between minicars and large cars, and between small cars and large cars. The deformation and acceleration of the minicar and small car is greater than that of large car. ODB, Overload and MDB tests were performed as procedures for evaluating vehicle compatibility. In overload tests, methods to evaluate the strength of the passenger compartment were examined, and it is found that this test procedure is suitable for evaluating the strength of passenger compartments.