Practical Analysis Technique for Quantifying Sideswipe Collisions

This paper presents a practical analytical approach for evaluating sideswipe collision severity from residual vehicular deformation. A simplified mathematical procedure was developed to evaluate vehicular speed changes, effective average vehicular acceleration rates and the collision duration from measurements of vehicular damage.

Several series of sideswipe collisions were staged to acquire empirical sliding contact data. The results of this testing were employed to provide a preliminary validation of the proposed analysis model. The limited validation supported the use of the proposed analysis technique to assess a vehicle's speed change resulting from a sideswipe collision.