IN DEPTH ANALYSIS OF FRONTAL COLLISIONS AS REGARDS THE INFLUENCE OF OVERLAP AND INTRUSION ON OCCUPANT SEVERE AND FATAL INJURIES

Improvements in frontal belted car occupant protection are the first priority in passive safety. Passenger compartment intrusion is considered by some as one of the main limiting factors of belt effectiveness. It is proposed to examine the effect of different amounts of intrusion at the dashboard level but also at the footwell level on overall severity of injuries, and to point out the balancing effect between intrusion and acceleration. The most effective protection of vehicle occupants can only be based on the analysis of real world crashes. This analysis concerns the intrusion but also the overlaps observed in frontal impact for the restrained front belted occupants, and uses two sources: (1) detailed survey by the PSA Peugeot-Citroen Renault Laboratoire d'Accidentologie et de Biomecanique (L.A.B) covering 8,000 vehicles and 14,000 occupants; and (2) the study of 1,280 police reports on fatal accidents which occurred in France in the second quarter of 1990. (A) For the covering abstract of the conference see IRRD 894848.