Practical Analysis Methodology for Low Speed Vehicle Collisions Involving Vehicles with Modern Bumper Systems

This paper presents and validates a practical analysis method for assessing the collision severity of real world low speed motor vehicle collisions based upon post-collision observations of vehicles with modern bumper systems. To achieve this, a series of low speed vehicle-vehicle and vehicle-barrier collisions were staged using five modern (1998 to 2000 model) vehicles equipped with different non-isolator bumper structures (e.g. foam impact absorber). The collision parameters of each vehicle-vehicle impact were compared with the results obtained from vehicle-barrier impacts involving the same vehicles. The analysis method was applied to predict the results of the vehicle-vehicle collisions and was found to be a valid method for correlating the collision severity of a low speed vehicle-vehicle impact from barrier test data.