Citation

Summers S, Willke DT, Sullivan LK, Duffy JS, Sword M. Proc. Int. Tech. Conf. Enhanced Safety Vehicles 2005; 2005: 13p.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, In public domain, Publisher National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In 2002, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) identified rollover crashes as one of its highest safety priorities. NHTSA formed an Integrated Project Team (IPT) specifically to examine rollover crashes and to make recommendations as to how it could most effectively improve safety in this area. This paper presents the research program undertaken to carry out the crashworthiness related aspects of these recommendations. The crashworthiness rollover research program can be separated into two main topics, ejection mitigation and protection for non-ejected occupants. The ejection mitigation program encourages the use of occupant containment countermeasures, developing performance requirements, and test procedures for evaluating these countermeasures, and developing test procedures to evaluate rollover sensors that will be used to deploy the countermeasures. The research program for the protection of nonejected occupants includes evaluating roof crush test methods and rollover restraint performance. NHTSA’s research plans, recent results, and their significance to the overall rollover problem are presented for each of these research areas.