According to 2005 national census, people more than 65 years of age comprise about 10% of total 48 million population. In 2030, the proportion of elderly will reach up to 23%. The statistical analysis of elderly traffic accident from the national policy report, the elderly fatalities comprised 2,183 (33.3% of 6,563) in 2004. This was a doubling compared with 14 yearsago. In 1994, elderly fatality was 1,748 (17.3%). Elderly drivers and passengers have a disproportionately higher crash involvement rate and commonly sustain more severe injuries than the other generation. The current frontal impact regulation of Korean safety standard (KMVSS 102) is based on the FMVSS 208 to protect the motor vehicle occupant in the event of frontalcrash type accidents. The injury criteria utilized in the regulation is based on 50th percentile Hybrid III dummies in both driver and passenger sides. Therefore, no motor vehicle standards in Republic of Korea are designed to specially address the needs of elderly persons. Since the elderly population is rapidly increasing, it is more important to improve the safetystandard to mitigate elderly casualties. A primary objective of the studyis to develop a guideline or standard for elderly occupant protection with new injury criteria on the frontal impact regulation and to promote design of restraint system or specially designed 'silver vehicle' for elderly in the domestic market. The physical characteristics of elderly Korean occupant are relatively smaller and lighter than those of western elderly occupants. Data from the SizeKorea database (total surveyed number of subjects in SizeKorea database was 14,200 between 0 to 90 years old), the 50th percentile height and weight of the subjects in target group (527 male samples) were 162.8cm and 62kg, respectively. From the in-depth study of recentyears vehicle-to-vehicle frontal crash accidents, the elderly occupants sustain more thorax rib fracture injury within MAIS <2. More than MAIS >3 case, the elderly occupant suffers more haemo/pneumo thorax injury than younger occupant. In this study, as an assessment tool with scaling methods 50th percentile Korean elderly Hybrid III type simulation model was developed to mitigate elderly thorax injury. The full text of this paper may be found at: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv21/09-0367.pdf For the covering abstract see ITRD E145407.
Abstract