A reexamination of the small overlap frontal crash

The objective of this study was to examine and rank the Small Overlap Frontal Crash as one of the eight-group taxonomy proposed by Ford. The Ford taxonomy classifies real-world frontal-impact crashes based on the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS). Frontally-impacted vehicles were identified for 1985 - 2008 model year passenger vehicles with Collision Deformation Classification (CDC) data from the 1995 - 2008 years of NASS. Small overlap frontal cases were identified where there was no engagement of the vehicle frame rails, and the direct damage was located entirely outside of the vehicle frame rails. The results are that full engagement and offset (offset category means the direct damage overlaps the vehicle frame rail, with the center of direct damage between the frame rails) were the most frequent crashes contributing 35% each. The frequency of the small overlap frontal was 6%. The risks of injury (AIS ≥ 2) for the full engagement, offset, and small overlap were 8%, 6%, and 3% respectively. For this study, the number of small overlap vehicles was 1,118 and the number of injured nearside occupants was 100. This study-following the Ford approach and reasonably identifying the location of the longitudinal rails based on CDC-suggests that the small overlap is at worst a moderately dangerous crash in the overall scheme of frontal crashes. The implications of this study are that the safety community should reexamine the significance of the small overlap frontal crash against an overall taxonomy of crashes.