Evaluation of the accuracy of side impact crash test reconstructions - biomed 2009

Each year in the U.S., vehicle side crashes result in over 6,000 fatalities. Delta-V, the vehicle change in velocity, is a widely used measure of crash injury risk in real world crashes. However, delta-V is difficult to estimate accurately for side crashes using reconstruction codes such as CRASH3. Such codes are the source of a large portion of the delta-V values in crash databases, so their accuracy has a direct impact on injury risk prediction data. In this study, delta-V was first reconstructed for a series of 42 staged side impact crash tests using CRASH3. This reconstructed delta-V was then compared to the delta-V recorded by the crash test instrumentation to determine the accuracy of the reconstructed value.