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Rollover accidents account for a large number of serious to fatal injuries annually. In the past, these injuries were often the result of unrestrained occupant ejection. Subsequent to mandatory belt use laws, a larger percentage of these injuries occur inside the vehicle, and the head and neck areas sustain a substantial number of these injuries. Rollovers have been characterized as violent events, roof crush as the natural consequence of such violence. Further, head and neck injury have been thus considered unavoidable, even with occupant use of the production restraints. This paper will describe the relationship between the three dimensional extent (severity) of roof crush and the equivalent drop test contact velocity as derived from physical experiments and tests. The drop test contact velocity is directly related to the cumulative change of velocity experienced by a vehicle as a result of roof contact deformation during a rollover accident by validated computer simulations.

This paper describes some human subject experiments in occupant response to rollover with reduced headroom. The results suggest that with a nominal 10 cm of head room, 7.5 to 15 cm of torso excursion in production belts and more than 15 cm of roof intrusion, serious neck injury is likely. Brain damage/head injury is more likely from a combination of roof rail crush and high change of angular roll rate.

For twenty years the dynamic test protocol for automotive safety research has been to use an anthropomorphic dummy in sled and crash test simulations. For the past four years, the author and associates have created and used a computer test protocol to model real world accidents and determine injury reduction from potential design modifications without some of the limitations and cost of the physical hardware and test procedure. The computer test protocol is described and examples of the research results in side and rollover accidents are detailed. Preliminary conclusions about injury reduction countermeasures and continuing research are suggested.

Mr. Donald Friedman was developing vehicle concepts at GM from 1960 to 1968 and has continued this research since then as president and founder of Minicars, Inc. He has participated in the development of urban electric cars, the DOT/AMF/ESV, passive restraints and structural energy management programs. Mr. Friedman is presently in charge of systems analysis and integration of the Minicars Research Safety Vehicle Program.

Lunar and planetary programs have entered the surface exploration research phase. In this phase, considerable emphasis is needed on high mobility vehicle configurations, reliability and high efficiency, low weight electrochemical energy converters, and electric traction power systems. This research, in many cases, is applicable to solving future mobility problems on earth. Three areas of current lunar and terrestrial research are discussed and analyzed, and the correlative advantages to those working in both fields are highlighted. The three areas are; (1) high mobility vehicle configurations; (2) electrochemical energy converters; and (3) electric traction power systems.