The Significance of Frontal Offset Collisions in Real World Accidents

The most important factors to consider in order to improve the level of occupant protection measures are those determined through the investigation of real world accidents. The distribution of various types of collision and impact speeds provides a sound basis for more realistic test procedures. One result of our in-depth accident investigations is the identification of the frontal offset collision with only partial overlap as the most frequent frontal accident with injured occupants. Based on that an additional frontal impact test procedure carried out with 40 % overlap at test speeds up to 55 km/h was derived. The effectiveness of offset design is verified by the analysis of actual accident data.