Comparison of car seats in low speed rear-end impacts using the BioRID dummy and the new neck injury criterion (NIC)

Long-term whiplash associated disorders (WAD) 1-3 sustained in low velocity rear-end impacts is the most common disability injury in Sweden. Therefore , to determine neck injury mechanisms and develop methods to measure neck-i njury related parameters are of importance for current crash-safety researc h. A new neck injury criterion (NIC) has previously been proposed and evalu ated by means of dummy, human and mathematical rear-impact simulations. So far, the criterion appears to be sensitive to the major car and collision r elated risk factors for injuries with long-term consequences. To further ev aluate the applicability of NIC, four seats were tested according to a rece ntly proposed sled-test procedure. 'Good' as well as 'bad' seats were chose n on the basis of a recently presented disability risk ranking list. The du mmy used in the current tests was the Biofidelic Rear Impact Dummy (BioRID) . The results of this study showed that NICmax values were generally relate d to the real-world risk of long-term WAD 1-3. Furthermore, these results s uggested that NICmax calculated from sled tests using the BioRID dummy can be used for evaluating the neck injury risk of different car seats. (C) 200 0 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.