Citation

Grime G, Jones IS. Proc. IRCOBI 1973; 1: 26-36.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1973, International Research Council on Biomechanics of Injury)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

It is obviously desirable that money and effort spent on designing cars to give maximum occupant protection should be spent to the best advantage. The designer therefore needs both a theoretical understanding of the design problem and a knowledge of the relative importance of guarding against the different types of impact. The theory of car collisions has been treated comprehensively in a previous paper by the authors(l); the present paper gives results of an investigation of the importance of the different types of impact in British accidents. For a better understanding of these practical results, however, it will be useful first to give some of the findings of the theoretical analysis.


Accidents are usually classified under the headings of 1) single vehicle accidents, 2) head-on collisions, 3) intersection accidents, 4) rear-end accidents, and 5) side-swipes when one vehicle strikes a glancing blow on another. The vehicle designer, however, is concerned not so much with accident types as with the different types of impact (including overturning as an impact) which occur in these accidents; these impacts are a) frontal, b) side, c) rear , and d) overturning. Ref 1 was an extensive investigation of the effect of these impacts on cars and their occupants in accidents of all types.