ANALYSIS OF FAR-SIDE IMPACTS IN EUROPE - OCCURENCE, INJURY OUTCOME AND COUNTERMEASURES

摘要

In the last twenty years many publications have shown the importance of far-side crashes in terms of occupant harm and injury severity. An international collaborative research program into protection of far-side occupants in a crash has been established in 2004 to coordinate the research work and find synergies in global activities. So far, nearly all published analysis of real world far-side accidents is based on US (NASS/CDS) or Australian (MIDS) data.Thus, the question arises, how relevant the findings of this data are for the accident situation in Europe. Currently there are neither legal nor consumer requirements for far-side occupant protection in Europe, US or Australia. In this study, we used the German In-Depth Accident Study (GIDAS) data from the year 1999 - 2009 for the analysis of far-side crashes, restricted to belted passenger car occupants not involved in a rollover. The dataset was weighted to the national statistics of the corresponding years.Front seat occupants, who represented about 90% of all side impact involved persons, had nearly the same exposure to near- and far-side impacts, whereas severely (MAIS3+) injured far-side occupants occurred half often as severely injured near-side occupants. About twenty-five percent of the side impact fatalities were seated on the far-side. These ratios are in the same magnitude to those presented by the analysis of NASS/CDS data. Fifty-six percent of severe injured far-side occupants sustained severe injuries to the thorax and 50% to the head due to contact with the (intruded) far-side structure, the seat belt, the adjacent seat structure or, if applicable, the adjacent occupant. Of all AIS3+ injuries the most were present in the thorax region (41%), the head (38%), and the extremities (10%). Percentages from US data for the chest and head region were lower (34% and 27%) while percentages for the extremities were higher (30%). In GIDAS over 40% of the collision opponents for MAIS3+F injured far-side occupants were fixed objects whereas US data analysis showed about 18% of these collision opponents.The distribution of delta V showed a substantial higher mean value in the German dataset for MAIS3+F injured far-side occupants compared to US data. Nevertheless, up to the level of lateral delta V present in current legal and rating side-impact tests the corresponding percentages of severely injured occupants seated near- and far-side were in the same range.Except the differences in the collision opponent type and the distribution of delta V the results from this study are in line with previously published results based on US data. In general the test methods derived from the US data and therefore also the proposed countermeasures can be adapted to the European far-side impact protection evaluation.