Head Motions in Abrupt Vehicle Maneuvers

We recently published a report on an extensive study of passenger responses to abrupt and unexpected vehicle maneuvers. Currently, around half of serious crashes are preceded by some attempted evasive braking or steering. Previous research has shown that these vehicle motions can change the postures and positions of vehicle occupants, which may affect their protection in any subsequent crash. We conducted a test-track study with 87 men and women with a wide range of body size and age in braking, lane-change, and turn-and-brake maneuvers. We used a novel markerless motion-capture method based on Microsoft Kinect to track head motion. We found that passenger head excursions were only moderately related to passenger characteristics, with age and BMI the strongest predictors. The reuslts will be useful for developing and tuning human models capable of simulating pre-crash events.