Annual Proceedings

This paper reports the findings of a study of younger and older driver behaviour to hazardous traffic manoeuvres in a driving simulator. Hazardous situations on a highway and residential drive were studied and drivers' vision and vehicle performance responses were collected. While all drivers were able to avoid crashes, the finding that older drivers were consistently slower to fixate hazardous stimuli in the driving environment and were slower to respond presents a potentially serious road safety concern. Further research is warranted, especially under conditions of increasing traffic complexity...

The minimum legal drinking age 21 (MLDA 21) legislation in the United States (U.S.) has been documented as one of the most effective public health measures adopted in recent times. This study reports on an effort to evaluate and interrelate a basic set of 16 laws directed at younger than age 21 youth that are designed to (a) control the sales of alcohol to youth, (b) prevent possession and consumption of alcohol by youth, and (c) prevent alcohol impaired driving by those younger than age 21. The first objective of this study was to determine whether there was any relationship between the existence and strength of the various underage drinking laws in a State and the percentage of younger than age 21 drivers involved in fatal crashes who were drinking...

More US teens die from traffic crashes than from any other cause, with speed and rural roads major contributing factors. This study aimed to validate a high-fidelity simulator to explore these risks in an injury-free environment. Twenty-one newly-licensed 16-year-old males completed simulated and on-the-road drives of the same rural roads. Average free speeds on three road segments showed no systematic differences across segments. The majority of teens exhibited speeds in the simulator within 10% of those on-the-road...

This study identified casualty crash types for which teen drivers experience excess risk relative to adults. Michigan State Police crash records were used to examine casualty crashes in two statewide populations of drivers who experienced at least one crash from 1989-1996 (pre-graduated driver licensing in Michigan): teens (ages 16-19) and adults (ages 45-65). Rates and rate ratios (RR) based on crash occurrence per 100,000 person miles driven (PMD) compared teens and adults from the two statewide populations...

This paper presents the potential safety benefits of the experimental French LAVIA Intelligent Speed Adaptation system, according to road network and system mode, based on observed driving speeds, distributions of crash severity and crash injury risk. Results are given for car frontal and side impacts that together, represent 80% of all serious and fatal injuries in France. Of the three system modes tested (advisory, driver select, mandatory), our results suggest that driver select would most significantly reduce serious injuries and death...

From December 2000 until July 2002 a package of speed-related initiatives and factors took place in Victoria, Australia. The broad aim of this study was to evaluate the overall impact of the package on crash outcomes. Monthly crash counts and injury severity proportions were assessed using Poisson and logistic regression models respectively. The model measured the overall effect of the package after adjusting as far as possible for non-speed road safety initiatives and socio-economic factors. The speed-related package was associated with statistically significant estimated reductions in casualty crashes and suggested reductions in injury severity with trends towards increased reductions over time...

Transdermal ethanol detection is a promising method that could prevent drunk driving if integrated into an ignition interlock system. However, experimental data from previous research has shown significant time delays between alcohol ingestion and detection at the skin which makes real time estimation of blood alcohol concentration via skin measurement difficult. Using a validated model we studied the effects that body weight, metabolic rate and ethanol dose had on the time lag between the blood alcohol concentration and transdermal alcohol concentration...

Past studies have demonstrated that police officers fail to detect a substantial proportion of alcohol-impaired drivers during traffic enforcement and that the use of passive alcohol sensors (PAS) could increase the driving-under-the-influence (DUI) arrest rate. Does the use of a PAS in routine traffic enforcement by officers without specialized DUI training increase the detection and arrest rate of alcohol-impaired drivers? In Anne Arundel County, Maryland, the Police Department provided the PAS devices to 24 randomly selected officers, divided equally between two squads of 12 officers each (one squad with the PAS and one squad without)...

Side impact pole/tree crashes can have devastating consequences. A series of 53 CIREN cases of narrow-object side impacts were analyzed. Twenty-seven of 53 had serious chest injury and 27 had serious head injury. Unilateral chest trauma led to the examination of residual crush pattern that often demonstrated oblique door intrusion into the occupant thorax space. It was hypothesized that unilateral chest trauma was caused by antero-lateral chest loading. This hypothesis was evaluated by conducting two (PMHS and ES2) vehicle side impact tests into a rigid pole...

The Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN) provides significant details on injuries, and data on patient outcomes that is unavailable in the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS). However, CIREN cases are selected from specific Level I trauma centers with different inclusion criteria than those used for NASS, and the assertion that a given case is similar to the population of NASS cases is often made qualitatively. A robust, quantitative method is needed to compare CIREN to weighted NASS populations...

This study applies NASS/CDS, GES and FARS data to examine occupant exposure plus injury and fatality rates for belted occupants in frontal crashes by seating position, age and gender. The NASS data was used to examine the distributions by crash severity. The GES data showed that when two elderly occupants (age 65+) were present, the female occupied the right front passenger position 73% of the time. A paired comparison analysis using FARS data showed that, for elderly occupants (age 65+), the fatality risk for elderly right front passengers is 42% higher than for elderly drivers...

A weighted logistic regression with careful selection of crash, vehicle, occupant and injury data and sequentially adjusting the covariants, was used to investigate the predictors of the odds of head/face and neck (HFN) injuries during rollovers. The results show that unbelted occupants have statistically significant higher HFN injury risks than belted occupants. Age, number of quarter-turns, rollover initiation type, maximum lateral deformation adjacent to the occupant, A-pillar and B-pillar deformation are significant predictors of HFN injury odds for belted occupants...

The objective of this study was to characterize the risk of mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) in living humans based on a large set of head impact data taken from American football players at the collegiate level. Real-time head accelerations were recorded from helmet-mounted accelerometers designed to stay in contact with the player's head. Over 27,000 head impacts were recorded, including four impacts resulting in MTBI. Parametric risk curves were developed by normalizing MTBI incidence data by head impact exposure data...

Seat belt interaction with a far-side occupant's shoulder and thorax is critical to governing excursion towards the struck-side of the vehicle in side impact. In this study, occupant-to-belt interaction was simulated using a modified MADYMO human model and finite element belts. Quasi-static tests with volunteers and dynamic sled tests with PMHS and WorldSID were used for model validation and comparison. Parameter studies were then undertaken to quantify the effect of impact direction, seat belt geometry and pretension on occupant-to-seat belt interaction...

The US Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard for frontal protection requires vehicle crash tests into a rigid barrier with two belted dummies in the front seats. The standard was recently modified to require two separate 56 Kph frontal tests. In one test the dummies are 50% males. In the other test, the dummies are 5% females. Analysis of crash test data indicates that the 56 Kph test does not encourage technology to reduce chest injuries in lower severity crashes. Tests conducted by Transport Canada provide data from belted 5% female dummies in the front seats of vehicles that were subjected crashes into a rigid barrier at 40 Kph...

We investigated whether the rating obtained in the EuroNCAP test procedures correlates with injury protection to vehicle occupants in real crashes using data in the UK Cooperative Crash Injury Study (CCIS) database from 1996 to 2005. Multivariate Poisson regression models were developed, using the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) score by body region as the dependent variable and the EuroNCAP score for that particular body region, seat belt use, mass ratio and Equivalent Test Speed (ETS) as independent variables...

This study proposes a total secondary safety index for light passenger vehicles that rates the relative performance of vehicles in protecting both their own occupants and other road users in the full range of real world crash circumstances. The index estimates the risk of death or serious injury to key road users in crashes involving light passenger vehicles across the full range of crash types. The proposed index has been estimated from real world crash data from Australasia and was able to identify vehicles that have superior or inferior total secondary safety characteristics compared with the average vehicle...

Tremendous effort has been invested in the laboratory to ensure side air bag (SAB) deployments minimize injury metrics in pediatric anthropometric test devices (ATDs). Little is known, however, about the experience of children exposed to this technology in real world crashes. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of SAB exposure in children and provide estimates of injury risk among those exposed. This study utilized data from the Partners for Child Passenger Safety study, a large-scale child-focused crash surveillance system, to identify a probability sample of 348 child occupants, age 0-15 years, weighted to represent 6,600 children, in vehicles of model year 1998 and newer, equipped with SABs, in side impact crashes from three large U...

Evaluations of crash protection safety features require measures for quantifying impact severity. Velocity change (delta-V) is the major descriptor of collision severity used in most real-world crash databases. One of the limitations of delta-V is that it does not account for the time over which the crash pulse occurs (delta-t). Late model GM vehicles equipped with event data recorders capture the cumulative delta-V in 10 ms intervals over the crash pulse. Deceleration can be readily calculated from these data and provides a complementary measure of severity that has not previously been available for real world crashes...

Based on real-world crash data and recent field studies, an ad-hoc group was set up in order to have a better comprehension of the effects of misuse of Child Restraint Systems (CRS) on child protection. A testing programme of 60 single misuse situations was conducted. Test results confirmed that, in frontal impact, children have higher risk of being injured on a number of different body regions when CRS's are misused. This work provides material for educational and training purposes to help parents understand that child restraints need to be correctly fitted in order to provide the level of protection they are designed for...