In the study presented in this poster, the incidence, risk and rate of sustaining a facial, head/neck, upper extremity (UX), and thorax/abdomen/spine injury were investigated for deployed and undeployed driver cases. This analysis was carried out to better understand the risk and severity of injuries at low delta-V (velocity change). The safety benefit of eliminating driver airbag deployments for less than 10 mph was also investigated. The data consists of 1,640 injured driver cases in frontal or offset frontal, non-rollover, non-ejection crashes that occurred in 1995 and 1996. For these cases, the total number of injuries was 3,319. The data included cases with autos and light trucks equipped with airbags on the driver side. The data was obtained from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA's ) Crashworthiness Data System (CDS). Although the sample size was too small to produce statistically significant results, the trends observed may be used to support and prioritise the need to increase airbag deployment thresholds or minimise the gray zone. The gray zone is the delta-V range between the threshold for no airbag deployment and the threshold for an airbag deployment.
Abstract