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As a supplement to officially published government accident statistics since 1969 Mercedes-Benz has been systematically investigating automobile accidents involving injured occupants in Mercedes-Benz cars. Typically our accident data has been analysed using the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS). This paper will describe the first application of the new Injury Cost Scale (ICS), published at the AAAM-conference 1989, to our real world accident data. A comparison for the handling of multiple injuries will be provided taking into account on the one hand only the most expensive injury and on the other hand each injury. The first experiences in the application of the ICS will be discussed. The ICS is intended as supplemental to the AIS.

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.