NHTSA has published our report on the effects of abrupt vehicle maneuvers on front-seat passengers with a wide range of initial postures. In the first part of the study, we tested 12 participants in three different vehicle models using the same protocols we'd used in an earlier study. We found differences in head exursion in one vehicle, but overall the results were similar. We then ran a large-scale, test-track study to examine the effects of initial posture on head kinematics in braking and lane-change maneuvers. The study with 90 participants documented the effects of recline, leaning forward, leaning inboard, and seat position. We used a functional regression approach to generate corridors for head excursions. To our knowledge, this is the first use of both a sample of this size and functional methods to quantify this important variability in pre-crash posture.
March 2021
Effects of Pre-Crash Vehicle Motion on Occupant Posture
