WASHINGTON, D.C. – ABS brakes have been around since 1929; they were applied to automobiles in the early 1970s; today they are standard on many new vehicles and serve as the basis for electronic stability control systems. That they are effective is a matter of research and an industry assumption – which makes the recent dust-up between the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Insurance Institute on Highway Safety (IIHS) all the more puzzling.

Last month, the IIHS strongly criticized a NHTSA study which found that ABS are not particularly effective on motorcycles as “junk science.”

“There’s ample evidence that motorcycle antilocks prevent crashes and save lives,” said IIHS Executive Director Adrian Lund in an article published in the institute’s Status Report. “Unfortunately, NHTSA decided to do its own study using a flawed methodology. The agency should disregard its latest findings, which only serve to muddle the issue.”

The National Center for Statistics and Analysis’ July report, Motorcycle Antilock Braking Systems and Crash Risk Estimated from Case-Control Comparisons, compared motorcycles with and without ABS, using two sets of data – fatal crashes and all police-reported crashes. The case comparison “did not find statistically-significant results to suggest that ABS affects motorcycle crash risk.” The NCSA did find that the police were less likely to report pre-crash braking in fatal crashes for ABS motorcycle riders; that ABS riders in all police-reported crashes were more likely to be male; and that police-reported crashes were more likely to involve multiple vehicles when the motorcycle was equipped with ABS. The researchers could draw no conclusions from these findings.

The report directly countered a January IIHS study, which found that ABS reduced fatal motorcycle crashes by 37 percent, compared to those in which the motorcycle did not have ABS. IIHS researchers arrived at that figure by comparing fatal crash rates per 10,000 registrations of motorcycles with and without ABS, from 2003-2008. A second study by the affiliated Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) found that motorcycle models with ABS had 22 percent fewer claims for damage per insured vehicle year than the same models without. Looking at injury claims data, the HLDI found that “claim frequencies under medical payment coverage were 30 percent lower for motorcycles with ABS compared with models without this feature. Claim frequencies under bodily injury liability coverage were 33 percent lower for ABS models.”

The two institutes undertook the research based on rising motorcycle registration and motorcycle fatality rates. From 1997 to 2008, motorcyclist deaths more than doubled, from 2,077 to 5,091. Motorcycle registrations have likewise shot up – from 5.1 million in 2000 to 9.8 million in 2008. Also driving the institutes’ research was the unique challenges of motorcycle braking:

“Operating the brakes on most motorcycles is much more complicated than on four-wheel vehicles. Most motorcycles have separate controls for the front and rear brakes, with the front brake usually controlled by a lever on the right handlebar and the rear brake controlled by a pedal operated by the rider’s right foot. During braking, a rider must decide how much force to apply to each control. As with other types of vehicles, much more deceleration can be obtained from braking the front wheel than from braking the rear wheel. Motorcycles are inherently less stable than four-wheel vehicles and rely on riders’ skills to remain upright during demanding maneuvers such as hard braking. Braking too hard and locking a wheel creates an unstable situation. Locking the front wheel is particularly dangerous, with falling down being almost certain,” author Eric R. Teoh wrote in Effectiveness of Antilock Braking Systems in Reducing Motorcycle Fatal Crash Rates.

The agency had criticized the IIHS study for failing to account for the possible differences between the riding habits of those who buy motorcycles with ABS, versus those who don’t. The IIHS returned fire, calling the NHTSA study “a poorly designed government study” that flies in the face of a “broad spectrum” of other research. It countered that the HLDI study did account for factors that influence crash rates, such as driver age and gender. Further, the IIHS maintained, NCSA’s attempt to create data sets based on crashes in which braking was irrelevant and those in which it was influential was flawed, because braking is relevant in nearly all crashes. The IIHS urged NHTSA to disregard its own study and propose an ABS rule.

Former DOT Secretary Mary Peters, an avid motorcyclist, who narrowly avoided a brain injury in 2005 when her motorcycle hit pavement and crashed, pushed strongly for helmet laws during her tenure. The U.S. Department of Transportation Action Plan to Reduce Motorcycle Fatalities, unveiled in October 2007, outlined a number of initiatives including conducting a Motorcycle Crash Causes and Outcomes Study, developing national standards for entry-level rider training, creating a police training program, and toughening FMVSS 218, which regulates motorcycle helmets, to address the falsification of helmet certifications.

But ABS was not on the agenda until July 2009, when the agency released its Vehicle Safety Rulemaking and Research Priority Plan 2009-2011. Among the plans was a NPRM slated to be published in 2010, which would require ABS for motorcycles. The report noted: “Preliminary data indicate potentially large benefits for braking improvements, but the agency needs more data to determine whether the improvement is statistically significant.” With 2010 nearly over, an NPRM seems unlikely this year.

Meanwhile, the agency published a second study in July concluding that ABS for heavy trucks, which have been mandated under FMVSS 121 for all air-braked vehicles 10,000 pounds or more since 1998, are effective in some crash scenarios. The study looked at crashes in which ABS might be influential and at vehicles in which ABS was available on the trailer and on the tractor.

There was insufficient data to determine ABS effectiveness in the former configuration. But crash statistics from seven states provided the basis for a preliminary estimate of ABS effectiveness for all levels of police-reported crashes of 3 percent, which represented a statistically significant 6-percent reduction in the crashes where ABS is assumed to be potentially influential, compared to a control group.

ABS were most effective in avoiding crashes off the highways, where the speed limit was 50 mph or less. ABS also appeared to be effective in reducing jack-knife-type, off-road, and at-fault collision crashes. But the study found no significant reductions in fatal crashes overall, and there was an increase in highway crashes in which a truck rear-ended another vehicle.

“On interstates and roads with speed limits 55 mph or higher, tractor-trailers rear-ending leading vehicles increased significantly. An estimate of fatal crash reduction was derived by considering type and speed of the road, urbanization, and ambient lighting condition. The estimate is a 4-percent reduction in crashes where ABS could potentially be effective, or about a 2-percent reduction in all fatal crash involvements. The result is not statistically significant,” the report said.

ARLINGTON, VA — The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety released its latest ratings for boosters, and out of 60 models gave 15 models high marks and dinged 11 as “not recommended.” Meanwhile, a statistical analysis of the association between booster seat use and the risk of death found that boosters were no better than seatbelts alone in preventing death among 4-8-year-old children.

Researchers T.M. Rice, C.L. Anderson, and A.S. Lee of the University of California, Berkley’s Traffic Safety Center and the Center for Trauma and Injury Prevention Research at the University of California Irvine’s Department of Emergency Medicine conducted a matched cohort study (matching exposed to unexposed persons prior to outcome determination) using 1996-2006 data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System. The sample of 6,006 vehicles included those with two or more occupants in the first two rows of seating, with one or more occupants aged 4-8 years old in which one or more occupants died.

The analysis, published in Injury Prevention, showed that seat belts, used with booster seats, were “highly effective” in preventing death among young motor vehicle occupants. In a severe crash, unrestrained children in the sample were 2.8 times more likely to die than those restrained in seat belts with boosters. The effectiveness for children 6-8 years was slightly less. But the study showed that belts alone were almost as effective: “Unrestrained children were 2.6 times more likely to suffer fatal injury than belted children. The estimated death risk ratio comparing seatbelts with boosters with seatbelts alone was 0.92.”

The researchers concluded that, in looking at the risk of death only, “booster seats do not appear to improve the performance of seatbelts.” They also noted that these results were similar to a 2002 study published in the Annual Proceedings Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine.

The numbers did not lead the researchers to recommend that young children use seatbelts alone because other studies show that booster seats reduce non-fatal injury severity – the abdominal and spinal injuries characteristic of seatbelt syndrome.

“Clinicians and injury prevention specialists should continue to recommend the use of boosters to parents of young children,” the study’s authors said.

IIHS’s second annual recommended booster seat list attempts to help parents and caregivers select the booster seats “most likely to provide good lap and shoulder belt fit in a range of vehicles,” the institute said in a news release about rankings. In its first year, the institute evaluated 41 seats. This latest round covers nearly all models sold in the United States. Eventually, IIHS plans to structure its booster seat ratings like its Top Safety Pick awards, evaluating new models as they are released to the public.

Institute engineers assess each model by measuring how lap shoulder belts fit a “specially outfitted” 6-year-old crash test dummy under “four conditions spanning the range of safety belt configurations in vehicle models. Each booster gets four scores for lap belt fit and four for shoulder belt fit. The overall rating for each booster is based on the range of scores for each measurement,” the news release said.

The IIHS’s best-rated boosters are: the Combi Dakota backless with clip, Recaro Young Sport highback (combination seat), Recaro Vivo highback, Maxi-Cosi Rodi XR dual-use highback, Evenflo Big Kid Amp backless with clip, Eddie Bauer Auto Booster dual-use highback, Cosco Juvenile Pronto dual-use highback, Britax Frontier highback.

The Institute did not recommend: Harmony Secure Comfort Deluxe backless with clip, Combi Kobuk dual-use highback, Evenflo Express highback (combination), Eddie Bauer Deluxe highback (combination), and Evenflo Sightseer highback. Also on the list are 3-in-1s including the Safety 1st Alpha Omega Elite, Alpha Omega Elite, Eddie Bauer Deluxe 3-in-1, Safety 1st All-in-One, Alpha Omega Luxe Echelon, and Alpha Omega.

Half of the boosters that aren’t recommended are 3-in-1s that leave the lap belt too high on the abdomen and the shoulder belt too far out on the shoulder. One seat, the Harmony Secure, has armrests that push the lap belt away from the hips, way out on a child’s thighs. Shoulder belt fit is the main problem for the rest — the Combi, 2 Evenflos, and the Eddie Bauer Deluxe.

Dorel Juvenile Group, the largest US children’s gear distributor, makes three of the most highly recommended boosters and seven of those that aren’t recommended. Dorel seats sell under the names Cosco, Dorel, Eddie Bauer, Maxi-Cosi, and Safety 1st.

These recent developments contradict, in part, earlier findings by researcher Suzanne Tylko of Transport Canada, who reported three years ago that a five-point restraint system is the safest option for children.

Transport Canada measured the performance of booster seats with child Hybrid III dummies representing a 10- and 6-year-olds in full frontal rigid barrier and frontal offset deformable barrier tests. The 6-year-old dummy was restrained in a belt-positioning booster and the 10-year-old was restrained with either a booster or a three-point belt. Tylko and her colleague Dainius Dalmotas tested 77 passenger cars, cross-over vehicles, minivans and SUVs from the 2003-2005 model years, paired with low-back and high-back boosters, high-back boosters with a harness latch and tether and a lap and shoulder belt.

In the tests involving the six-year-old dummy in a lap and shoulder belt, the belt would either slide up into the neck or down to the shoulder, as the dummy pitched forward. In the latter case, some dummies rolled out of the belt entirely—particularly if there was any offset component to the crash—causing the head and chest to hit its lower extremities. Tylko found little difference among booster seats. All of them – unlike three-point belts alone – effectively kept the lap portion of the belt in the pelvic region, and prevented it from traveling into the abdominal cavity. But boosters didn’t do much to protect the child’s chest region, failing to keep them properly positioned in an adult three-point belt.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s effort to write a new roof strength standard drags into its fourth year, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has gone ahead and created one that is far more stringent than anything the agency has proposed.

Beginning in 2010, automakers who want IIHS’s coveted Top Safety Pick designation will have to build vehicle roofs with a 4.0 strength-to-weight ratio – far above the timid 2.5 ratio the government has been contemplating for its amended standard. The IIHS estimated that vehicles that could meet this new strength standard could reduce injury risk to occupants by 40-50 percent. In January, the insurance advocacy group informed manufacturers about its new requirement for vehicle roofs to win its highest honor. The industry greeted the news with the “can’t-do” spirit that characterizes its reaction to nearly every safety improvement.

“A number have said to us the 4.0 strength-to-weight ratio is a very hard standard to meet,” says IIHS’s Adrian Lund.

(Based on NHTSA data, the Volvo XC90, the 2006-2009 Honda Civic, Volkswagen Jetta 2005-2009; Toyota Camry 2007-2009 and Toyota Tacoma 2005-2009 already meet or exceed that standard.)

But the IIHS has heard it all before. When it introduced its new 40 mph frontal offset crash tests in 1995, automakers protested that their vehicles couldn’t pass such a tough test. Today, virtually 100 percent of new vehicles earn a good rating in that test. In 2003, when the IIHS upped the ante on side-impact crashworthiness, by using a barrier more representative of an SUV than the sedan-type barrier used in the federal compliance test, manufacturers complained again. The IIHS reports that automakers are rapidly rising to that challenge, with 64 percent earning a “good” rating in that test in 2009.

“The main point is: It’s hard when you start, but obviously, it can be done,” Lund says. “I think we will get some movement on roof strength. They are going to try to do it – this one isn’t rocket science.”

The IIHS decided to move forward on roof strength, after conducting two studies on mid-sized SUVs and small sedans showing that roof strength was strongly related to occupant injury risk. In conducting its research, the IIHS cleverly sidestepped the chicken-and-egg debate of whether occupants sustain injuries in a rollover because they “dive” into the roof or because the roof crushes into occupants. Instead, it compared injury figures from real world crashes with the roof strength ratios of the 11 models in those crashes, as measured by the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 216 quasi-static compliance test.

The first study, published in March 2008, focused on SUVs. The IIHS culled 22,817 rollover crashes from the State Data System – police-reported crashes submitted to NHTSA – in 12 states that had data available for some part of calendar years 1997-2005, had a mechanism to identify single-vehicle rollovers, and had sufficient VIN information to determine vehicle make, model, and model year. The 12 states that met these criteria – Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Wyoming – used KABCO injury coding, in which “K” represents fatal injuries and “A” represents incapacitating injuries as assessed by the investigating police officer.

The IIHS used the crash data to select the mid-sized SUVs most represented in fatal crash data and the models most represented on the road to ensure a sufficient sample size. Eleven models were used as the basis of comparison. General Testing Laboratories, under contract with IIHS, subjected eight midsize SUVs – six of which were used vehicles – to the FMVSS 216 quasi-static tests. The maximum force required to crush the roof to 2, 5, and 10 inches of plate displacement was recorded. (The IIHS used NHTSA roof strength data for three models.)

The IIHS found that in all cases, “increased measures of roof strength resulted in significantly reduced rates of fatal or incapacitating driver injury after accounting for vehicle stability, driver age, and state differences.” Researchers estimated that a one-unit increase in peak strength-to-weight ratio within five inches of plate displacement was estimated to reduce the risk of fatal or incapacitating injury by 28 percent.

This finding contradicted other studies on the relationship between roof strength and injury risk, but the IIHS defended its study as having more tightly controlled potential confounding factors. Also, the IIHS estimated number of lives saved by increasing the regulated SWR to 2.5 is considerably higher than the estimated 13 and 44 lives saved indicated in NHTSA’s 2005 NPRM, despite the fact the agency’s estimates cover the entire passenger vehicle fleet.

This winter, the organization conducted a second study, using the same methodology, with small sedans. The as-yet unpublished study confirmed the results of the SUV project – roof strength was highly correlated with injury risk, and the benefits of stronger roofs were substantial.

Lund said that the IIHS’s research results were too definitive to wait for the agency to finally move on an amended roof crush standard. First introduced in August 2005, the proposed amendment would increase the roof strength-to-weight ratio from the current standard of 1.5, established in 1973, to 2.5 times a vehicle’s weight in a rollover crash. The maximum 5-inch plate displacement limit would be replaced by a requirement that the minimum strength be achieved prior to head-to-roof contact for an ATD positioned in the front outboard seat on the side of the vehicle being tested. In January 2008, NHTSA issued a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking announcing that it would delay the adoption of a new standard while it considered testing a sequential two-sided test for possible adoption. The agency was required to revamp the standard by July 2007, but has delayed further action until April.

IIHS is scheduled to start testing roofs soon and will be releasing small SUV roof strength ratings in the spring. Roof strength will officially be among the Top-Safety-Pick criteria in 2010 models beginning this Fall, Lund said.