INJURY PROBABILITY AND RISK IN FRONTAL CRASHES - EFFECTS OF SORTING TECHNIQUES ON PRIORITIES FOR OFFSET TESTING

Front occupant exposure, MAIS2+ and MAIS3+ injury risk, and maximum-in jured body regions were studied in frontal offset impacts. The effect of overlap amount was evaluated in three data subsets from 9,902 accid ent-involved Volvo cars with at least SEK35,000 (= US$5,000) damage. T he subsets were selected by a MAIS2+ or MAIS3+ injured co-occupant or by an equivalent barrier speed (EBS) >20 mph, and consisted of 661 or 249 cases and 654 cases, respectively. Age and gender effects were min imized. Collisions with 1/3 to 2/3 overlap were most frequent, but the most injurious crash type was influenced by the data sorting techniqu e. The EBS criterion seemed to select crashes of more comparable sever ity and this dataset may be most appropriate to evaluate overlap effec ts. With EBS >20 mph, the highest injury risk occurred in 1/3 overlap crashes, at 62% for MAIS2+ and 44% for MAIS3+ injury. This was two to three times higher than the corresponding risk in full frontal crashes . Head and chest were the most severely injured body regions, but lowe r-extremity injuries became more important as overlap decreased. (C) 1 998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.