Evaluation of Occupant Protection from Responses Measured In Laboratory Tests

Real world crash injury is distributed somewhat uniformly across a wide range of car crash severities. Our current safety evaluation practices address primarily the high severity crashes which have “high” risk of injury hut “low” exposure frequency. Little or no evaluation is directed toward moderate severity crashes which have “low” risk of injury but “high” exposure frequency and result in much of the total occupant injury. Occupant protection evaluation which relies on analysis of laboratory tests using both an injury probability interpretation of test responses and consideration of exposure frequency produces a perceived injury distribution over a broad range of crash severities that appears similar to that for occupants injured in car crashes. In contrast, analysis of laboratory tests using an average tolerance interpretation of test responses results in a perceived injury distribution in which injury only occurs in “high¹⁵ severity exposures. It is essential to have very low injury risk in high frequency exposures such as low and moderate severity crashes. Implicit in assuring low injury risk is an objective interpretation of laboratory test responses which considers the distribution of car occupant tolerances.