This research program attempted to reconstruct cases from the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) in which children, not in child seats, had been killed or seriously injured because of the deploying air bags and cases where there was minor injury with air bag deployment. The main objective was to compare injury measures from an instrumented child dummy to the actual injuries suffered by children in crashes and determine if a mathematical relationship exists between body region AIS level on the children and corresponding measures on the dummy. A secondary objective was to evaluate injury measures in the 5th percentile Hybrid III in the driver position, not necessarily as a simulation of the crash event. This paper presents the results of the test program and the comparison of measured dummy responses to the acutal occupant injuries in the crashes from the selected NASS cases. (A)
Abstract