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One of the most important aspects of seat design is seat comfort. A purely subjective measure of comfort, however, is not very useful to designers. Methods for providing objective measures run up against problems of accuracy, repeatability, and problems associated with interfering with the interface that is actually being assessed. The authors outline a technique to provide objective measurement of the seat/subject interface. This allows a graphic and at the same time quantifiable method for presenting the performance of the seat. This should provide useful data to the designer at an earlier and more useful stage of the seat design process.

This paper addresses the nature and cause of lower limb injuries received by car occupants in road traffic accidents. Although such injuries in themselves are rarely life threatening they can lead to long term disability and impairment. The UK CCIS database which describes both the injuries to car occupants and the damage to the vehicle was used to determine the relative importance and frequency of these injuries. The contact points within the car were examined together with the effect of intrusion on injury severity. It was found that a serious injury to the lower limb was often an occupant's most severe injury and so work to mitigate these injuries would have both long term benefits to accident victims as well as reducing the cost to society. Lower limb injuries are very dependant on the type of impact sustained.