Target Population for Injury Reduction from Pre-Crash Systems

摘要

Pre-Crash Systems (PCS) integrate the features of active andpassive safety systems to reduce both crash and injuryseverity. Upon detection of an impending collision, PCS canprovide an early warning to the driver and activate automaticbraking to reduce the crash severity for the subject vehicle.PCS can also activate the seatbelt pretensioners prior toimpact. This paper identifies the opportunities for injuryprevention in crash types for which PCS can be potentiallyactivated. These PCS applicable crash types include rear-endcrashes, single vehicle crashes into objects (trees, poles,structures, parked vehicles), and head-on crashes. PCS canbenefit the occupants of both the striking and struck vehicle.In this paper, the opportunity for injury reduction in thestruck vehicle is also tabulated.The study is based upon the analysis of approximately 20,000frontal crash cases extracted from NASS / CDS 1997-2008.Annually, there are an estimated 16,800 seriously injuredoccupants (MAIS3+) and 2,900 fatalities in PCS applicablecrash types. Rear-end crashes were the most frequent crashtype followed by object crashes and opposite directioncollisions. Annually PCS applicable crash types comprisedover one-third of all occupants exposed to frontal crashes.Furthermore, PCS applicable crash types accounted for 50%of all seriously injured occupants and 56% of all fatalities inall frontal crashes annually. Although only 12% of occupantswere unbelted, these unbelted occupants accounted for 45%of the serious injuries (MAIS3+) and 57% of the fatalities.Although a similar number of occupants were exposed in thestriking and struck vehicle in rear-end crashes, there weredouble the number of serious injuries yet half the number offatalities in striking vehicle occupants. This paper identifiesthe potential population of occupants that are exposed andinjured in crash types where there is possibility for PCS intervention. This paper does not present any estimates forbenefits of PCS implementation.