Kullgren 1 VALIDATION OF NECK INJURY CRITERIA USING RECONSTRUCTED REAL-LIFE REAR-END CRASHES WITH RECORDED CRASH PULSES

To date no AIS1 neck injury mechanism has been established, thus no neck injury criterion has been validated against such mechanism. Validation methods not related to an injury mechanism may be used. The aim of this paper was to validate different proposed neck injury criteria with reconstructed reallife crashes with recorded crash pulses and with known injury outcomes. A car fleet of more than 40,000 cars fitted with crash pulse recorders have been monitored in Sweden since 1996. All crashes with these cars, irrespective of repair cost and injury outcome have been reported. With the inclusion criteria of the three most represented car models, single rear-end crashes with a recorded crash pulse, and front seat occupants with no previous long-term AIS1 neck injury, 79 crashes with 110 front seat occupants remained to be analysed in this study. Madymo models of a BioRID II dummy in the three different car seats were exposed to the recorded crash pulses. The dummy readings were correlated to the real-life injury outcome, divided into duration of AIS1 neck injury symptoms. Effectiveness to predict neck injury was assessed for the criteria NIC, Nkm, NDC and lower neck moment, aimed at predicting AIS1 neck injury. Also risk curves were assessed for the effective criteria as well as for impact severity. It was found that NICmax and Nkm are applicable to predict risk of AIS1 neck injury when using a BioRID dummy. It is suggested that both BioRID NICmax and Nkm should be considered in rear-impact test evaluation. Furthermore, lower neck moment was found to be less applicable. Using the BioRID dummy NDC was also found less applicable.