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On March 26, 2004, a fatal accident occurred when the head of a 6-year-old child was trapped in a large revolving door in a high-rise building in Tokyo. To investigate the cause of the accident, Prof. Yotaro Hatamura, representing Hatamura Institute for the Advancement of Technology, gathered experts in various fields including architecture and door manufacture, and initiated the “Door Project,” with the cooperation of the building company. Nissan Motor Co. participated in this project, and conducted load measurement tests on various doors. Applying car crash test technology, including production of special door test dummies and high-speed photography, it was possible to simulate the accident while taking human movement into account. As a result, we obtained important data for accident cause investigation.

In recent years, the specification of a Side Impact Moving Deformable Barrier (MDB) has been in discussion internationally. This paper describes the results of our investigation and examination concerning the MDB specification, based on current Japanese models. The paper describes the following. 1) The investigation of the dimension of passenger cars in the Japanese market to determine the average of car front-end dimension characteristics. 2) The analysis of force distribution on the rigid barrier in a frontal barrier impact test of typical Japanese passenger car models by using FEM. 3) Comparison of test results between a car-to-car test using the passenger car with average front-end characteristic as a striking car and a MDB-to-car test under ECE R95 test condition.

The WorldSID is a new, advanced Worldwide Side Impact Dummy that has the anthropometry of a mid-sized adult male. It has a mass of 77.3 kg, a standing height of 1753 mm and a seated height of 911 mm. Almost every body region is a new, innovative design, setting the WorldSID apart from all existing side impact dummies. It incorporates over 200 available data channels, in-dummy wiring, and an in-dummy data acquisition system (DAS). The dummy is designed to be used for research and future harmonized side impact test procedures as defined by the International Harmonized Research Activities (IHRA) and other organizations. It is expected to have a biofidelity classification of “good” to “excellent” using the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) dummy classification scale. The WorldSID will be the basis for the future development of a side impact dummy family.

A series of side impact tests have been conducted to evaluate the biofidelity of the latest prototype of a small side impact dummy, SID-II s β+(plus). The tests were lateral impacts for the thorax, shoulder, and pelvis, as well as lateral drops for the head, thorax, abdomen, and pelvis. The test data were compared to the response target corridors that were estimated by scaling the cadaver test data to a smaller occupant. The test results show that the head, should, thorax, abdomen and pelvis of the SID-II s β+ either completely or close to meets the response target corridors, and that its biofidelity has been improved from the previous dummy SID II s B-prototype.