The RID2 Biofidelic Rear Impact Dummy

Human subjects and the recently developed RID2 rear impact crash test dummy were exposed to a series of full scale, vehicle-to-vehicle crash tests to evaluate the biofidelity of the RID2 anthropometric test dummy on the basis of calculated neck injury criterion (NIC) values. Volunteer subjects, including a 50^th percentile male, a 95^th percentile male, and a 50^th percentile female, were placed in the driver's seat of a vehicle and subjected to a series of three low speed rear impact crashes each. Both subjects and dummy were fully instrumented and acceleration-time histories were recorded. From this data, velocities of the heads and torsos were integrated and used to calculate the NIC values for both crash test subjects and the RID2. The RID2 dummy is designed to represent a 50^th male. The overall performance and biofidelity of the RID2 compared most favorably to the human subject who was, himself, a 50^th percentile male. Although the number of tests was small, the biofidelity of the RID2, in the context of the smaller female and larger male, was limited. The overall performance and biofidelity of the RID2 was reasonable when compared to the 50^th percentile male volunteer. It is possible that under real world crash conditions, in which the occupant of the target vehicle is exposed to an unexpected impact, that their NIC values might be more comparable to those of the RID2, suggesting that its biofidelity could have been underestimated as a result of the alerted status of the crash test volunteers.