The biomechanical response of the lower abdomen to belt restraint loading.

Lower abdominal injury, induced most frequently by the steering wheel, seatbelt and various protruding objects in a vehicle, is less frequent than thoracic injury but may be relatively more severe. Since mechanical surrogates or cadavers alone do not provide adequate appraisal of injury severity of abdominal loading, the purpose of this study was to establish valid injury criteria to improve our understanding of the biomechanics, mechanism, and time of occurrence of abdominal injury using belt webbing as the loading interface.