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Often, the accident reconstructionist will find that there is no crash test data for a particular vehicle, making a direct calculation of the crush stiffness coefficients impossible without performing an actual crash test. A faster and more cost effective solution is to use “generic” crush stiffness coefficients that relate similar already tested vehicles to the incident vehicle. One previously published article that has been used for this purpose is; “Updating the Vehicle Class Categories” by Siddall and Day [ 9 ]. However, this paper, along with Hargens and Day's earlier paper, “Vehicle Data Sources for Accident Reconstruction” [ 3 ], are now somewhat outdated by newer model vehicles. New generic crush stiffness coefficient values were calculated to better represent newer vehicles produced between 1990-1999 and 2000-2009. The same eleven vehicle classifications used in this article were obtained from the above cited paper.

This paper reports on tests conducted to determine static and dynamic coefficients of friction between occupant clothing and automotive seat upholstery materials. Multiple materials were used for both the occupants clothing and the seat upholstery to examine friction variations with various material combinations. A fixture was fabricated to hold an automotive seat stationary while a dummy was pulled forward off of the seat. The forces required to pull the dummy were recorded for the various upholstery and clothing materials and the coefficients of friction were determined.