Citation

Gaylor L, Junge M, Abanteriba S. Traffic Injury Prev. 2018; 19(4): 423-432.

Affiliation

School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, RMIT University , Melbourne , Australia.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/15389588.2018.1428314

PMID

29360404

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Thoracic side airbags (tSAB) were integrated into the vehicle fleet to attenuate and distribute forces on the occupant's chest and abdomen, dissipate the impact energy, and move the occupant away from the intruding structure, all of which reduce the risk of injury. The research piece investigates and evaluates the safety performance of the airbag unit by cross-correlating data from a controlled collision environment with field data.

METHOD: We focus exclusively on vehicle-vehicle lateral impacts from the NHTSA's Vehicle Crash Test Database and NASS-CDS database, which are replicated in the controlled environment by the (crabbed) barrier impact. Similar collisions with and without seat-embedded tSAB are matched to each other and the injury risks compared.

RESULTS: Results indicated that dummy-based thoracic injury metrics were significantly lower with tSAB exposure (p<0.001). Yet, when the controlled collision environment data was cross-correlated with NASS-CDS collisions, deployment of the tSAB indicated no association with thoracic injury (tho.MAIS2+ unadjusted RR = 1.14, 90%CI 0.80-1.62; tho.MAIS3+ unadjusted RR = 1.12, 90%CI 0.76-1.65).

CONCLUSION: The data from the controlled collision environment indicated an unequivocal benefit provided by the thoracic side airbag for the crash dummy however the real-world collisions demonstrate no benefit is provided to the occupant. This has resulted from a non-correlation between the crash test/dummy based design taking the abstracting process too far as to represent the real-world collision scenario.

Language: en

Keywords

Thoracic injury; crash test dummy-occupant cross correlation; lateral collision; thoracic side airbag