The risk of moderate or serious abdominal injury is higher for belted drivers in frontal crashes with a deployed airbag than for belted drivers not exposed to a deployed airbag. An analysis of roughly 13,000 belted front seat occupants in frontal crashes from National Automotive Sampling System / Crashworthiness Data System (NASS/CDS) case years 1993-2007 with and without airbag deployment were...

Prior studies on racial and ethnic disparities in survival after motor vehicle crashes have examined only population-based death rates or have been restricted to hospitalized patients. In the current study, we examined 3 components of crash survival by race/ethnicity: survival overall, survival to reach a hospital, and survival among those hospitalized. Nine years of data (from 2000 through 200...

Vehicle crashworthiness is an important yet difficult design attribute. It can be argued, that an assisting task for the design process would be to pre-compile library databases for the crash behavior of elementary structural members. Such databases would guide designers to quickly select the appropriate dimensions of structural members once estimates of the load requirements are available. Unf...

The change in velocity (delta-V) crash severity metric in the NASS/CDS (National Automotive Sampling System / Crashworthiness Data System) is computed using the WinSmash crash reconstruction code. Beginning in 2008, NASS/CDS investigators have started to use an enhanced version of WinSmash, WinSmash 2008, which features a comprehensive vehicle specific library for over 5000 vehicle make-model-y...

With the advent of powerful computers, vehicle safety issues have recently been addressed using computational methods of vehicle crashworthiness, resulting in reductions in cost and time for new vehicle development. Vehicle design demands multidisciplinary optimization coupled with a computational crashworthiness analysis. However, simulation-based optimization generates deterministic optimum d...

Bridge rails are a type of longitudinal barrier that serves the important purpose of keeping vehicles on the bridge structure. Many different designs have evolved for bridge rails, including some based upon the cross sections used for rigid concrete safety shapes. These designs need to conform to the crashworthiness requirements of NCHRP Report 350 or MASH to be acceptable for use on U.S. highw...

Due to a highly competitive market, the development cycles in the automotive industry have to be constantly reduced while the demand regarding performance, cost and safety is rising. The development of innovative, high quality products within a short time, which are able to succeed in the international car producer competition is only possible by using CAE-based virtual prototyping. One of the ...

Thoracic organ injuries account for 13% of all serious injuries to belted front seat occupants in frontal crashes. The rate at which thoracic organ injury occurs and the manner in which the injuries occur has not changed significantly with the inclusion of airbags. This study was based on the injury outcomes of over 28,000 belted occupants in frontal crashes from National Automotive Sampling Sy...

The data contained here were obtained from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration׳s National Automotive Sampling System - Crashworthiness Data System (NASS-CDS) for the years 2008-2014. This publically available data set monitors motor vehicle crashes in the United States, using a stratified random sample frame, resulting in information on approximately 5000 crashes each year...