Can an Automotive Designer Find Happiness with AIS?

The abbreviated injury scale (AIS) is an ordinal measure of automotive occupant crash injury severity. This paper uses multiple regression analysis for empirically estimating expected AIS as a function of crash parameters. It is proposed that the estimated AIS provides a standardized measurement of crash severity. The difference between the actual crash severity and the standardized crash severity provides a measure of how well particular vehicle and/or road characteristics contribute to higher or lower injury severity. This procedure requires additional development with respect to improved measures of injury severity and application of the prediction procedure to specific crash analysis problems.