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The NHTSA's side impact dummy (SID) was evaluated against what is known of the side impact response of the human chest and responses were compared with data on Hybrid III frontal and EURQSID side impact characteristics. The SID dummy lacks a human-like chest deflection response which is crucial to the injury indicating capability of a dummy, it has a 9.8 kg near-side rib mass which is approximately an order of magnitude greater than that of the human, and it develops impact forces that are nearly three times higher than the recommended human chest response. It possesses characteristics primarily of an inertial device. The thoracic trauma index (TTI) was evaluated as an indicator of side impact injury risk, and design trends and optimized padding characteristics identified with the SID and TTI were compared with those from the Hybrid III dummy and viscous or compression injury criteria.

Injury and disability associated with head (brain), neck (spinal cord) and facial injury account for 61.7% of the total societal Harm in the most recent estimate of motor-vehicle related crash injuries. This paper discusses the need for accurate information on translational and rotational acceleration of the head as the first step in critiquing the Head Injury Criterion (HIC) and other injury predictive methods, and developing a fuller understanding of brain and spinal cord injury mechanisms. A measurement system has been developed using linear accelerometers to accurately determine the 3D translational and rotational acceleration of the Hybrid III dummy head. Our concept has been to use the conventional triaxial accelerometer in the dummy's head to assess translational acceleration, and three rows of in-line linear accelerometers and a least squares analysis to compute statistical best-fits for the rotational acceleration about three orthogonal axes.