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In spite of the generally downward trend in the number of people injured in road accidents in the Federal Republic of Germany (original federal states), the number of children injured as passengers in passenger cars has not decreased over the last few years. In 1990, 13,890 children were injured travelling as passengers in passenger cars. That was the highest number since 1981 [1]. A study has revealed that the risk of unprotected (without the use of child restraint systems) children incurring serious injury while travelling in passenger cars is seven times as great as that of protected children [2]. Nevertheless, several cases are known of children in front-facing child restraint systems (CRS) receiving neck injuries in frontal collisions leading to tetraplegia (simultaneous paralysis of all four limbs). In most cases, these injuries occurred with children up to an age of eighteen months.

This report describes the steps to a standardized full scale test methodology, which is needed for the next step, namely the development of a simple and reproducible method to prove the performance of vehicle structures in pedestrian accidents, e.g. by body segment impactor tests. A first project consisted in a literature study by TNO+ which gave the main input data for the test method, as e.g. car shapes, standing positions of the pedestrian and impact speeds. Further on 7 cadaver tests were carried out by ONSER+ and 24 dummy tests were carried out with a Hybrid II adult dummy and a 6 years old child dummy at the BASt+. These tests were the data base for dummy improvements to get a better correspondence in dummy kinematics and loads.