Search Results

Emergency situations rarely occur in a driver's experience and the braking and steering manoeuvres that are then required are usually outside the routine physical behaviour ranges. Immediate reactions are automatic and are therefore unlikely to include physical movements that go beyond these limits. It has always been difficult, however, to prove this because simulators could not create total realism, accident studies do not show brake pedal behaviour and realistic experiments are unethical and dangerous. This paper reviews what is known about driver braking behaviour together with accident studies. Experiments performed by Lucas are described in which pseudo-realistic accident situations are created and braking behaviour modelled.

This study evaluated the response of restrained post-mortem human subjects (PMHS) in 40 km/h frontal sled tests. Eight male PMHS were restrained on a rigid planar seat by a custom 3-point shoulder and lap belt. A video motion tracking system measured three-dimensional trajectories of multiple skeletal sites on the torso allowing quantification of ribcage deformation. Anterior and superior displacement of the lower ribcage may have contributed to sternal fractures occurring early in the event, at displacement levels below those typically considered injurious, suggesting that fracture risk is not fully described by traditional definitions of chest deformation. The methodology presented here produced novel kinematic data that will be useful in developing biofidelic human models.

To provide effective occupant protection for people who ride in motor vehicles while seated in wheelchairs, products are required that both secure the wheelchair and restrain the occupant. An international effort to develop dynamic test standards for these products has produced a compliance test protocol that includes specification of the sled deceleration-time history, the crash pulse corridor. An interlaboratory study was conducted to determine if the crash pulse corridor was sufficiently defined to produce acceptably low variation in the test results. The study, that involved four labs each replicating the same sled test three times, produced consistent results. The study results suggest that a reasonably precise compliance test protocol can be defined using a crash pulse corridor that is generously drawn to accommodate rather large differences in sled crash pulse shapes.