The National Crash Severity Study (NCSS) was undertaken to collect accident data that would allow determination of the relationships between occupant injury and accident severity. The measure of severity most commonly used to characterize an accident is the velocity change experienced by the passenger compartment of a vehicle during a collision. Although in some 52% of accidents contained in the 1978 NCSS data file such velocity changes have been established with the crash computer program, it was felt that a substantial number of other cases could be reconstructed by other methods. Procedures have been developed to estimate velocity changes in two car accidents in which the damage to only one of the cars is known, and also in the case of single vehicle utility pole accidents. Comparisons with velocity changes experienced during crash tests and also with predictions from the crash program indicate that the supplemental reconstruction procedures are able to produce reasonable estimates. Using such procedures, 484 additional accidents from the 1978 NCSS file have been reconstructed to include velocity change estimates for the vehicles involved.
Samenvatting