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Based on a long recognized need, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has begun to reexamine the potential for international harmonization of side impact requirements. To this end, NHTSA, as directed by the U.S. Congress, has recently submitted a report to the Congress on the agency plans for achieving harmonization of the U.S. and European side impact regulations. The first phase of this plan involves crash testing vehicles compliant to FMVSS 214 to the European Union side impact directive 96/27/EC. This paper presents the results to date of this research. The level of safety performance of the vehicles based on the injury measures of the European and U.S. side impact regulations is assessed.

The public debate over the most appropriate seat design to best protect occupants at all rear impact speeds is more than an decade old. There have been numerous publications in the technical literature discussing the relative merits of lower versus higher seat back strength. Proponents of lower seat back strength assert that the larger rearward deformation of seat backs allowed by most current seats is less injurious to the seats’ occupants than seats with higher seat back strength. However, proponents of higher seat back strength assert that stiffer seat backs provide greater overall safety benefits to occupants of the seats and also protect passengers that may be seated behind them. The current study used a modified version of a validated MADYMO computer model of a 1986–1994 GM Grand Am production seat, originally developed by the University of Virginia (UVA), to determine the effect of seat back strength on occupant injury in rear impacts.