Side Impact Characteristics in Modern Light Vehicles 2024-01-2646
Occupant protection in side impacts, in particular for near-side occupants, is a challenge due to the occupant’s close proximity to the impact. Near-side occupants have limited space to ride down the impact. Curtain and side airbags fill the gap between occupant and the side interior. This analysis was conducted to provide insight on the characteristics of side impacts and the relevancy of currently regulated test configurations. For this purpose, 2007-2015 NASS-CDS and 2017-2021 CISS side crash data were analyzed for towed light vehicles. 2008 and newer model year vehicle data was selected to ensure that most vehicles were equipped with side/curtain airbags.
The results showed that side impacts accounted for approximately 26.7% of the vehicles involved and 18.9% of the vehicles with at least one seriously injured occupant. Most side impacts involved damage to the front and front-to-center of the vehicle. For seriously injured (MAIS 3+F) occupants, impacts to the occupant compartment accounted for more than 83% when near-sided and 86% when far-sided. Most serious-to-fatally injured near- and far-side occupants were involved in pure lateral (3 o’clock, 9 o’clock) and slightly oblique (2 o’clock, 10 o’clock) impacts.
The overall risk of serious injury was highest in distributed and front-to-center impacts. The occupant injury risk was more than 2 times higher when near-sided than far-sided, highlighting the need to test at this location. The median delta-V associated with serious injury to far-side occupants was 6.0 km/h higher than for near-side occupants, at 31.3 km/h and 25.4 km/h, respectively. Understanding crash characteristics provides insight into field relevancy of crash scenarios used to evaluate occupant responses. The results from this study suggest that current side impact standards are representative of a serious real world side impact.
