The potential of determining the change of injury severity in
the accident event taking passive as well as active measures into
account at the vehicle (integral systems) are at present limited to
pedestrian protective systems. Therefore, an extension of the
existing methods for the application with common integral systems
(front protection, side protection, etc.) is suggested. Nowadays
the effectiveness of passive safety systems is determined in crash
tests with very high accident severities. However, approximately
90% of real-world accidents have a lower accident severity as the
required crash tests. Thus, this paper will present a method
calculating the effectiveness of such an integral system based on
real-world accident data. For these reasons, this paper is
presenting a method for a more valid prediction of injury
severity.
The German In-Depth Database GIDAS allows clustering the
accident event in relevant car-to-car scenarios. The vehicle
dynamics of all scenarios from the database will be simulated in
PC-Crash, an accident-reconstruction software. Since the brake
assist is obligatory from 2012 on, the system and its effect on
each single accident scenario will be modeled. The effect of the
restraint system will be calculated with Finite Element Simulation
PAM-Crash. The outcome of the occupant simulation, the FMVSS injury
criteria (e.g., HIC₃₆), will be converted into the risk factor to
suffer an AIS3+ injury for each body region. Finally, the sum of
all the injury risks weighted with the relevance of each scenario
determines the expected value of MAIS3+ injured persons.
Consequently, the percentage of protected MAIS3+ occupants can be
calculated and the real-world benefit of an integral safety system
can be evaluated.
The method described above covers all requirements for
calculating the effectiveness of an integral safety system.
Therefore, systems influencing vehicle dynamics will be modeled.
The effect of these systems on impact situation will be calculated
and implemented in the occupant simulation. In combination, by the
use of this method the effectiveness of an integral safety system
is determined.