Newland Craig, Belcher Thomas, Bostrom Ola, Gabler Hampton C, Cha Joon-Geun, Wong Hee Loong, Tylko Suzanne, Dal Nevo Ross
Australian Government Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, Australia.
Stapp Car Crash J. 2008 Nov;52:327-47. doi: 10.4271/2008-22-0013.
To date, efforts to improve occupant protection in side impact crashes have concentrated on reducing the injuries to occupants seated on the struck side of the vehicle arising from contact with the intruding side structure and/or external objects. Crash investigations indicate that occupants on the struck side of a vehicle may also be injured by contact with an adjacent occupant in the same seating row. Anecdotal information suggests that the injury consequences of occupant-to-occupant impacts can be severe, and sometimes life threatening. Occupant-to-occupant impacts leave little evidence in the vehicle, and hence these impacts can be difficult for crash investigators to detect and may be underreported. The objective of this study was to evaluate the risk of impact injury from occupant-to-occupant impacts in side impact vehicle crashes. The study examined 9608 crashes extracted from NASS/CDS 1993--2006 to investigate the risk of occupant-to-occupant impacts. The study computed relative risk ratio of serious injury (MAIS 3 or greater) for drivers with and without an adjacent front seat passenger present. This approach avoids uncertainties in the coding of occupant-to-occupant contact. The NASS data showed an 8% increased injury risk for struck side drivers in cases where a belted front seat passenger was present. If the front seat passenger was unbelted, struck side driver injury risk was found to be 30% higher than for struck side drivers without a front seat passenger. A series of 6 full scale vehicle side impact crash tests, both mobile deformable barrier to vehicle and vehicle-to-pole, were conducted to assess injury risk and determine the occupant kinematics which lead to occupant-to-occupant impact. Limitations of the biofidelity of current ATDs to simulate occupant interaction were noted. Occupant interaction indicating risk of serious head injury to both the driver and front seat passenger was observed in vehicle-to-pole side impact. The results show that despite the introduction of countermeasures to protect struck side occupants from contact with intruding structure or external objects, these occupants may be severely injured by impacting adjacent occupants. The feasibility of a potential countermeasure, developed to offer protection for two adjacent occupants as well as a single occupant seated on the non-struck side, was investigated through analysis of the dummy injury responses produced in pole side impact tests, with and without the countermeasure installed. The countermeasure was observed to reduce the risk of head injury from occupant interaction.
迄今为止，提高车辆侧面碰撞中乘客保护的努力主要集中在减少坐在车辆受撞侧的乘客因与侵入的侧部结构和/或外部物体接触而受到的伤害。碰撞调查表明，车辆受撞侧的乘客也可能因与同一排座位上相邻的乘客接触而受伤。轶事信息表明，乘客之间碰撞造成的伤害后果可能很严重，有时甚至危及生命。乘客之间的碰撞在车辆中留下的证据很少，因此碰撞调查人员很难检测到这些碰撞，而且可能报告不足。本研究的目的是评估车辆侧面碰撞中乘客之间碰撞造成伤害的风险。该研究检查了从1993 - 2006年的NASS/CDS中提取的9608起碰撞事故，以调查乘客之间碰撞的风险。该研究计算了有和没有相邻前排乘客的驾驶员重伤（简明损伤定级标准为3级或更高）的相对风险比。这种方法避免了乘客之间接触编码的不确定性。NASS数据显示，在有系安全带的前排乘客的情况下，受撞侧驾驶员的受伤风险增加了8%。如果前排乘客未系安全带，发现受撞侧驾驶员的受伤风险比没有前排乘客的受撞侧驾驶员高30%。进行了一系列6次全尺寸车辆侧面碰撞试验，包括移动变形壁障对车辆以及车辆对柱的碰撞试验，以评估伤害风险并确定导致乘客之间碰撞的乘客运动学。指出了当前用于模拟乘客相互作用的人体模型生物逼真度的局限性。在车辆对柱侧面碰撞中观察到了表明驾驶员和前排乘客都有严重头部受伤风险的乘客相互作用。结果表明，尽管采取了对策来保护受撞侧乘客免受与侵入结构或外部物体的接触，但这些乘客可能会因撞击相邻乘客而受到重伤。通过分析在安装和未安装对策的柱侧面碰撞试验中假人的伤害反应，研究了一种为保护两名相邻乘客以及坐在非受撞侧的一名乘客而开发的潜在对策的可行性。观察到该对策降低了乘客相互作用导致头部受伤的风险。
