| JOB POSTING
Messerschmidt Safety Consulting (MSC) is currently accepting applications for Accident Investigator and Accident Reconstructionist. Both are salaried, full-time positions with benefits. MSC is a full-service transportation safety firm located in Birmingham, Alabama, providing forensic accident analysis (accident reconstruction) and preventative safety consulting. MSC's clients include transportation fleets and attorneys representing both plaintiffs and defendants in civil proceedings. Full position announcements, with instructions on how to apply, are available at www.mscrecon.com/jobs
MSC is an equal opportunity employer, and all hiring, training, and promotion decisions will be made solely on the basis of qualifications and achievements
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Rollover Crash safety: Characteristics and issues
Young D., Grzebieta R.H., Rechnitzer G., Bambach M. & Richardson S.
This paper presents a brief overview of current issues relating to rollover safety and associated literature. It also describes the research program currently underway in Australia investigating rollover crashes. Preliminary data from investigating US NASS online data and some Australian data is revealing the highly fatal nature of rollovers caused by the consistent violation of basic crashworthy design principles when considering occupant protection in rollover crashes. The paper confirms that ejection and roof intrusion are again linked to a higher proportion of MAIS 3+ injuries suggesting that manufacturers have yet to fully address these areas in modern vehicle design related to rollover crashes.
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800-280-7940
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Rollover Crashes: Diving versus roof crush
Raphael Grzebieta, David Young, Michael Bambach &
Andrew McIntosh
A rational analysis of the two apparently conflicting views of neck injury causation for contained and belted occupants in rollover crashes that have been presented in research literature to date, i.e. torso augmentation (diving) vs. roof intrusion, is presented. The validity of each of the views and associated injury causation mechanisms and underlying concepts are investigated using basic Newtonian laws of physics.
Through the analysis of General Motors Malibu II rollover test series, the authors show how roof crush at high intrusion velocities results in high neck loading. Equations are developed that demonstrate how roof intrusion is integrally linked to neck loading and hence is the main causal factor of serious neck injuries in rollover crashes. The paper also shows how roof intrusion compounds torso augmentation resulting from rollover kinematic motion.
Discussions are also presented regarding the "lift shaft" analogy proposed by Moffatt and used to explain how serious head and neck injuries occur in rollover crashes. The authors show that analogy is inappropriate by at least an order of magnitude in terms of the crash severity it suggests.
View/Download PDF
Roof Strength and Injury Risk in Rollover Crashes
Matthew L. Brumbelow Eric R. Teoh David S. Zuby Anne T. McCartt
Vehicle rollover is a major cause of fatality in passenger vehicle crashes. Rollovers are more complicated than planar crashes, and potential injury mechanisms still are being studied and debated. A central factor in these debates is the importance of having a strong vehicle roof. Minimum roof strength is regulated under Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 216, but no study to date has established a relationship between performance in this or any other test condition and occupant protection in real-world rollover crashes. The present study evaluated the relationship between roof strengths of 11 midsize SUV roof designs and the rate of fatal or incapacitating driver injury in single-vehicle rollover crashes in 12 states. Quasi-static tests were conducted under the conditions specified in FMVSS 216, and the maximum force required to crush the roof to 2, 5, and 10 inches of plate displacement was recorded. Various measures of roof strength were calculated from the test results for evaluation in logistic regression models. In all cases, increased measures of roof strength resulted in significantly reduced rates of fatal or incapacitating driver injury after accounting for vehicle stability, driver age, and state differences. A one-unit increase in peak strength-to-weight ratio (SWR) within 5 inches of plate displacement, the metric currently regulated under the FMVSS 216 standard, was estimated to reduce the risk of fatal or incapacitating injury by 28 percent.
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Welcome to the Accident Reconstruction Newsletter Volume Issue #95.
 New ARC Network Web Site:
We are working hard on the development of the new ARC Network web site. We are almost to the testing stage of the new research section and the news article database. We have also redeveloped the organization section, book store and Education Directory. We are still on track to launch the new site in Sept/Oct 2008.
2009 CDR User's Conference:
Due to requests, we have opened the online registration for the 2009 Crash Data Retrieval User's Conference.
The 2009 CDR User's Conference will be held in Houston, TX. This conference will feature industry experts speaking on various topics, most of which relate directly to crash data retrieval. All conference presentations will be held at the Sheraton North Houston Hotel.
Last year we reached capacity with just over 250 attendees. If you are planning on attending the 2009 CDR User's Conference it is highly recommended to register early. Not only does it guarantee you a seat, but also gets you a $200 early registration discount.
If you would like to be a speaker at the 2009 CDR User's Conference, please email your abstract to: editor@collisionpublishing.com
2008 ARC-CSI Crash Conference:
First off I would like to thank all the attendees, speakers and exhibitors for make this years ARC-CSI Crash Conference a huge success.
This conference has grown over the years to be the largest crash conference of the year. At the end of each conference, we have all the attendees fill out an evaluation form that rates all aspects of the conference. I am pleased to report that we had our best evaluations ever this year.Bill Davies of GM Canada opened the conference with a presentation on new vehicle technologies and how they might impact reconstruction techniques. There was some really interesting "future technology" stuff covered (of course, that's on the DVD as well). There were many other valuable presentations including those by Nate Shigemura, Dave Templeton, Gary Lewis, Jim Peterson, Tim Reust, and Larry Wilson just to name a few. In all, a very full schedule which gathered 27 ACTAR CEUs. On top of that, there were
some 20 vendor displays open daily along through the hot breakfast and buffet lunches and, at the end of the conference, lucky attendees went home with more than $20,000 in door prizes from vendors and sponsors!
We also, thanks to Wade Bartlett, used a new high-speed camera to capture one of the angles of the crash tests. The results were very high quality, slow motion footage of each crash test. We used this camera in conjunction with our other HD Video cameras. We will be using more of these high-speed cameras at next year's ARC-CSI.
Some of the other highlights of the 2008 ARC-CSI Crash conference include:
Three PIT crash tests with a fully instrumented "violator driver" capturing the head, thorax and lumbar accelerations experienced by the PIT-ed driver in the maneuver which fit nicely with Georgia State Patrol Sgt Tommy Sturdivan's conference presentation on reconstructing those types of crashes.
A pedestrian crash test that became a pedestrian crash reconstruction workshop lead by Greg Russell and C. R. Lewis and fit dove-tailed nicely with Jerry Eubanks' presentation on current trends in pedestrian crash
analysis.
At the 07 Crash Conference, there was a crash test that suggested different levels of acceleration might be observed laterally across a car in a crash where the "target" car was struck while crossing the path of the bullet laterally. By instrumenting the bullet car with an array of accelerometers laterally across the car in a test this year, we we able to see that effect AND compare it to the effect up to the period where the airbags might be deployed and whether or not
that would be a "problem."
There were two motorcycle crash tests, one into a low-profile vehicle and one to a high profile vehicle (Dodge Van).
Additional tests included a car-to-bus crash and high speed
car-to-van crash for a total of seven crashes. All of this information and more is summarized online at www.crashconferences.com
Collision: Volume 3, Issue 1 is currently at the printer and is scheduled to begin shipping the third week of July.
If you would like to subscribe to Collision or purchase any of the back issues, please visit www.collisionpublishing.com or ask your local accident reconstruction organization if they are an industry partner with Collision for a discounted subscription.
Collision Publishing will be placing all the back issues of Collision on sale for one month only in August 2008. If you subscribe to this newsletter, you will automatically receive the announcement of the sale and all the details.
Thank you for supporting the ARC Network and subscribing to the Accident Reconstruction Newsletter.
Scott Baker
President
ARC Network LLC
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Occupant Dynamics in Rollover Crashes: Influence of roof deformation and seat belt performance on probable spinal column injury
MARTHA W. BIDEZ, JOHN E. COCHRAN JR., DOTTIE KING, and DONALD S. BURKE III
Abstract-Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death in the United States for people ages 3-33, and rollover crashes have a higher fatality rate than any other crash mode.
At the request and under the sponsorship of Ford Motor Company, Autoliv conducted a series of dynamic rollover tests on Ford Explorer sport utility vehicles (SUV) during 1998 and 1999. Data from those tests were made available to the public and were analyzed in this study to investigate the magnitude of and the temporal relationship between roof deformation, lap-shoulder seat belt loads, and restrained anthropometric test dummy (ATD) neck loads.
During each of the three FMVSS 208 dolly rollover tests of Ford Explorer SUVs, the far-side, passenger ATDs exhibited peak neck compression and flexion loads, which indicated a probable spinal column injury in all three tests. In those same tests, the near-side, driver ATD neck loads never predicted a potential injury. In all three tests, objective roof/ pillar deformation occurred prior to the occurrence of peak neck loads (Fz, My) for far-side, passenger ATDs, and peak neck loads were predictive of probable spinal column injury. The production lap and shoulder seat belts in the SUVs, which restrained both driver and passenger ATDs, consistently allowed ATD head contact with the roof while the roof was contacting the ground during this 1000 ms test series.
Local peak neck forces and moments were noted each time the far-side, passenger ATD head contacted (''dived into'') the roof while the roof was in contact with the ground; however, the magnitude of these local peaks was only 2-13% of peak neck loads in all three tests. ''Diving-type'' neck loads were not predictive of injury for either driver or passenger ATD in any of the three tests.
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Diving Versus Roof Intrusion: A review
of rollover injury causation
David Young, Raphael Grzebieta, Andrew McIntosh,
Michael Bambach and Bertrand Frechede
Rollover injuries are the outcome of the inability of a vehicle's crashworthiness design, or lack thereof, to protect its occupants during a rollover crash. While countermeasures for injuries due to ejection are well established, there is still much debate ongoing regarding injury mechanisms of occupants contained in a vehicle during a rollover and hence countermeasures required to mitigate such injuries. This paper presents and analyzes the two apparently conflicting views of injury causation for contained occupants in rollovers that have been presented in research literature to date: diving versus roof intrusion. To analyze the validity of each of these theories, the basic physics behind the underlying concepts is investigated. Injury results from the General Motors (GM) rollover Malibu II test series are then used and reanalyzed in light of the findings presented in this paper. Results show that the most injurious events in the Malibu II tests are those where the roof structure was not strengthened. It was also concluded that more work needs to be carried out to establish acceptable injury mechanisms and associated injury criteria for future rollover crash testing protocols.
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Charles C. Thomas
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