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This paper examines the directional handling characteristics of several vehicles in their original condition, then examines modifications to a few of these vehicles to determine if the handling characteristics can be made more forgiving of normal operators without sacrificing utility and without substantial increases in cost. These analyses of vehicles are made in the context of what normal operators are capable of performing with regards to steering response.

Ambulances are largely exempt from crashworthiness and occupant protection passive safety design standards in the USA, and have a poor road safety record. This comparative evaluation of USA ‘concept safety’ ambulances and a standard Australian ambulance is based on basic principles of crashworthiness and available crash test data. There are features of USA ambulance design that are not within known principles and technical aspects of crashworthiness and safety design, and include some predictable serious occupant protection hazards. The USA ambulance industry should recognize and apply crashworthiness and occupant protection principles to reduce current system failures for this fleet of essential service vehicles.

Rear underrun crashes involving heavy vehicles with rear overhangs represent the most extreme examples of incompatibility between heavy vehicles and passenger cars. This type of crash often causes severe or fatal injuries to car occupants. This paper describes the development of a three-dimensional MADYMO model simulating a car crashing first at 48km/h and then at 75 km/h into the rear of a truck with an energy-absorbing rear underrun barrier attached. The underrun barrier was designed to absorb part of the impact energy of the car and hence reduce the injuries of the car occupants. The collision was simulated in order to aid the design and analysis of energy-absorbing truck underrun barrier systems. A Hybrid III 50th percentile male dummy was used to model the driver and to calculate the Head Injury Criterion (HIC), head resultant deceleration and the chest resultant deceleration.

This paper investigates the issue of geometric incompatibility between vehicles involved in T-bone side impact crashes. Some illustrative examples and case histories are presented that clearly demonstrate how a bullet vehicle, with a high front bumper region and a raised bonnet with a very stiff facia, intrudes significantly into the soft section of a sedan shaped car resulting in sever head and chest trauma. Experimental results of two T-bone crash tests: a sedan car into a sedan car and a Four Wheel Drive (4WD) vehicle into a sedan car are described. The paper also presents a MADYMO simulation of a tram impacting the side of a car demonstrating how head strike of the struck vehicle’s near side occupant can result in severe head injury at speeds as low as 35 km/h. The authors conclude with some discussion of how the front of vehicles should be designed so as to eliminate the possibility of sever intrusion and head strike in such crashes.

This paper provides a summary of preliminary results of three car-to-car 90-degree lateral impact crash tests with initially restrained Hybrid III and US-SID dummies. These tests comprised part of a collaborative research project between Monash University, Autoliv Australia and the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria. The overall research project objectives were to investigate the nature of non-struck side occupant injuries in automobile side impacts and to develop technical solutions to reduce these injuries. The test program results showed that a sash belt with a pretensioner and good geometry was effective in reducing occupant lateral excursions and lap belt loads. An increase in occupant neck loading was however observed and measured. Lateral torso seat restraints helped to prevent direct contacts between adjacent occupants resulting in a reduced HIC measured for a non-struck side occupant dummy.

This is a summary of a paper which first appeared in the International Journal of Crashworthiness under the title: “Side Impact Protection - Occupants in the Far-Side Seat”, Vol. 3, No.2, pp 93-122. Readers are directed to the full paper for a more comprehensive discussion of the issues presented here. Much of the applied vehicle side impact occupant protection research to date has concentrated on occupants seated beside the struck side of vehicles. These occupants are defined as ‘near-side’ occupants. Real world crash evidence however has shown that occupants seated on the side away from the struck side, defined as ‘far-side’ occupants, are still subject to a risk of injury. This paper examines side impact epidemiology from an injury causation perspective, and endeavours to explain evidence indicating head injuries and seat belt related injuries constitute a significant proportion of all far-side impact injuries.