O'Neill Brian
Traffic Inj Prev. 2009 Apr;10(2):113-26. doi: 10.1080/15389580802486225.
Motor vehicle crashes result in some 1.2 million deaths and many more injuries worldwide each year and is one of the biggest public health problems facing societies today. This article reviews the history of, and future potential for, one important countermeasure-designing vehicles that reduce occupant deaths and injuries. For many years, people had urged automakers to add design features to reduce crash injuries, but it was not until the mid-1960s that the idea of pursuing vehicle countermeasures gained any significant momentum. In 1966, the U.S. Congress passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, requiring the government to issue a comprehensive set of vehicle safety standards. This was the first broad set of requirements issued anywhere in the world, and within a few years similar standards were adopted in Europe and Australia. Early vehicle safety standards specified a variety of safety designs resulting in cars being equipped with lap/shoulder belts, energy-absorbing steering columns, crash-resistant door locks, high-penetration-resistant windshields, etc. Later, the standards moved away from specifying particular design approaches and instead used crash tests and instrumented dummies to set limits on the potential for serious occupant injuries by crash mode. These newer standards paved the way for an approach that used the marketplace, in addition to government regulation, to improve vehicle safety designs-using crash tests and instrumented dummies to provide consumers with comparative safety ratings for new vehicles. The approach began in the late 1970s, when NHTSA started publishing injury measures from belted dummies in new passenger vehicles subjected to frontal barrier crash tests at speeds somewhat higher than specified in the corresponding regulation. This program became the world's first New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) and rated frontal crashworthiness by awarding stars (five stars being the best and one the worst) derived from head and chest injury measures recorded on driver and front-seat test dummies. NHTSA later added side crash tests and rollover ratings to the U.S. NCAP. Consumer crash testing spread worldwide in the 1990s. In 1995, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) began using frontal offset crash tests to rate and compare frontal crashworthiness and later added side and rear crash assessments. Shortly after, Europe launched EuroNCAP to assesses new car performance including front, side, and front-end pedestrian tests. The influence of these consumer-oriented crash test programs on vehicle designs has been major. From the beginning, U.S. NCAP results prompted manufacturers to improve seat belt performance. Frontal offset tests from IIHS and EuroNCAP resulted in greatly improved front-end crumple zones and occupant compartments. Side impact tests have similarly resulted in improved side structures and accelerated the introduction of side impact airbags, especially those designed to protect occupant's heads. Vehicle safety designs, initially driven by regulations and later by consumer demand because of crash testing, have proven to be very successful public health measures. Since they were first introduced in the late 1960s, vehicle safety designs have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and prevented countless injuries worldwide. The designs that improved vehicle crashworthiness have been particularly effective. Some newer crash avoidance designs also have the potential to be effective-e.g., electronic stability control is already saving many lives in single-vehicle crashes. However, determining the actual effectiveness of these new technologies is a slow process and needs real-world crash experience because there are no assessment equivalent of crash tests for crash avoidance designs.
机动车碰撞事故每年在全球造成约120万人死亡以及更多人受伤,是当今社会面临的最大公共卫生问题之一。本文回顾了一项重要对策——设计能减少驾乘人员伤亡的车辆——的历史及未来潜力。多年来,人们一直敦促汽车制造商增加设计特性以减少碰撞伤害,但直到20世纪60年代中期,追求车辆对策的想法才开始有显著进展。1966年,美国国会通过了《国家交通和机动车安全法案》,要求政府发布一套全面的车辆安全标准。这是世界上首次发布的此类广泛要求,几年内欧洲和澳大利亚也采用了类似标准。早期的车辆安全标准规定了各种安全设计,使得汽车配备了腰部/肩部安全带、能量吸收式转向柱、防撞门锁、高抗穿透性挡风玻璃等。后来,标准不再具体规定特定的设计方法,而是使用碰撞测试和仪器化假人来根据碰撞模式设定严重驾乘人员受伤可能性的限制。这些更新的标准为一种方法铺平了道路,即除了政府监管外,还利用市场来改进车辆安全设计——使用碰撞测试和仪器化假人向消费者提供新车辆的比较安全评级。这种方法始于20世纪70年代末,当时美国国家公路交通安全管理局(NHTSA)开始公布在比相应法规规定速度稍高的正面障碍物碰撞测试中,新乘用车中系安全带假人的伤害测量数据。这个项目成为了世界上首个新车评估项目(NCAP),并通过根据在驾驶员和前排座椅测试假人上记录的头部和胸部伤害测量数据授予星级(五星为最佳,一星为最差)来评定正面碰撞安全性。NHTSA后来在美国NCAP中增加了侧面碰撞测试和翻滚评级。消费者碰撞测试在20世纪90年代在全球范围内传播开来。1995年,公路安全保险协会(IIHS)开始使用正面偏置碰撞测试来评级和比较正面碰撞安全性,后来又增加了侧面和后部碰撞评估。不久之后,欧洲推出了欧洲新车评估项目(EuroNCAP)来评估新车性能,包括正面、侧面和前端行人测试。这些以消费者为导向的碰撞测试项目对车辆设计产生了重大影响。从一开始,美国NCAP的结果就促使制造商提高安全带性能。IIHS和EuroNCAP的正面偏置测试极大地改进了前端缓冲区域和驾乘人员舱室。侧面碰撞测试同样带来了侧面结构的改进,并加速了侧面碰撞安全气囊的引入,尤其是那些旨在保护驾乘人员头部的安全气囊。车辆安全设计最初由法规驱动,后来由于碰撞测试而受到消费者需求驱动,已被证明是非常成功的公共卫生措施。自20世纪60年代末首次引入以来,车辆安全设计在全球范围内挽救了数十万人的生命并预防了无数伤害。改进车辆碰撞安全性的设计尤其有效。一些更新的防撞设计也有可能有效——例如,电子稳定控制系统已经在单车碰撞事故中挽救了许多生命。然而,确定这些新技术的实际有效性是一个缓慢的过程,并且需要实际碰撞经验,因为目前还没有针对防撞设计的等效于碰撞测试的评估方法。