Citation

Gaylor L, Junge M, Abanteriba S. Int. J. Veh. Safety 2018; 10(3/4): 195-211.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Inderscience Publishers)

DOI

10.1504/IJVS.2018.097705

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Lateral impacts with narrow objects subject the side of the vehicle to highly concentrated loading. Passive safety systems such as thoracic and head side airbags attempt to prevent injury during the given impact. The aim of the research is to evaluate the real-world effectiveness of the airbags systems by reviewing NASS-CDS data. The risk of injury is directly compared for vehicles with and without the deployed airbags. A total of 209 raw events (60,794 weighted) were obtained, of which 38 (2784 weighted) vehicles provided additional thoracic protection with the airbag and 28 (2450 weighted) had a head airbag deploy. The results indicated a strong protective ability of the head side airbags to prevent injury. On the other hand, no distinctive benefit could be attributed to the deployed thoracic airbags.

Keywords: fixed object collisions; side airbags; thoracic injury; head/face/neck injury; pelvis injury; abdomen injury.

Language: en