Spanish Researchers Find Unrestrained Objects Cause Head Injuries

Researchers from the University of Navarra have concluded that improper use of a vehicle’s head/neck rest can place occupants at risk for head injuries from unsecured objects. The researchers determined that occupants typically place the head rest in the lowest position, below the ears, leaving the head unprotected from small flying objects, such as cell phones, and the potential skull fractures and brain injuries that could result. The researchers evaluated the head injury risk through the Head Injury Criterion (HIC), by simulating a realistic biomechanical model under a frontal crash condition. The impacting object was a ball of 10 cm diameter. The results showed that “the risk of severe head injury in frontal collision due to unrestrained objects cannot be neglected.” Further, researchers found that “the mass of the object and the location of the impactor were directly related to the head injuries: greater mass and a greater relative distance between the object and the occupant produced a greater value for head injury criterion and, therefore, greater probability of fatal injuries.” The study, published in the International Journal of Crashworthiness, included a recommendation that occupants properly position the head rest and properly store unrestrained objects using a cargo barrier.

Older Drivers Make More Driving Errors

Researchers from the University of Iowa and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City studied the driving actions of 200 older and middle-aged drivers in an instrumented vehicle on a 35-mile route on urban and rural roads. The researchers found that “driving errors in older adults tend to increase, even in the absence of neurological diagnoses. Age-related decline in cognitive abilities, vision, and motor skills can explain some of this increase.” The study, entitled “Neuropsychological Predictors of Driving Errors in Older Adults” was published by the Journal of the American Geriatric Society.

The participants were 111 drivers aged 65-89 and 80 middle-aged drivers, 40-64 years old who were subjected to neuropsychological measures of their cognitive, visual, and motor capabilities. Each participant received a composite cognitive score, called COGSTAT. Researchers determined a safety error count, after a video review using a standardized taxonomy. The study found that older drivers committed an average of 35.8 ± 12.8 safety errors per drive, compared with an average of 27.8 ± 9.8 for middle-aged drivers. For each year of age increase, older drivers made an increase of 2.6 errors per drive. The researchers also found that after adjusting for age, education, and sex, COGSTAT was a significant predictor of safety errors in older drivers.

Another Benefit of Stronger Roofs: Fewer Spinal Cord Injuries

Another reason to improve the roof strength rule: Society could save $97 million annually in spinal cord injuries if severe roof intrusion were eliminated. Seattle area researchers report in Injury Prevention that spinal cord injuries, a “relatively low-incidence disorder with high associated costs,” come with a lifetime price-tag of $3 million, if the individual suffered a severe injury as a young adult, aged 20. Researchers looked at the risk of spinal cord injuries by belted and unbelted status in a rollover crash by roof intrusion magnitudes, using 1993-2006 data from the National Automotive Sampling System, Crashworthiness Data system. The study, entitled “Cost of Spinal Cord Injuries Caused by Rollover Automobile Crashes,” also factored in calculations of the degree of roof intrusion, using the same data set. Researchers also used data from the National SCI Statistical Center to determine the direct costs of SCI, based on neurological level of impairment and the completeness of the spinal cord injury. The results showed that, for belted occupants with more that 15 cm of roof intrusion, $97 million in direct costs would be saved, compared to rollover crash victims in which the roof intrusion was between 8 and 15 cms. The researchers found that “belted occupants had only a slightly increased risk of SCI when roof intrusion was 8-15 cm when compared to 3-8 cm. With the highest category of roof intrusion (>30 cm), the risk of SCI was nearly half of that seen in unbelted occupants. At all lower magnitudes of roof intrusion, seatbelt use provided a much greater relative reduction in the likelihood of SCI when compared with unbelted occupants. Roof contact was an increasingly common finding in belted occupants with larger magnitudes of roof intrusion, and nearly all of the injuries involved the cervical spine.” The study did not consider the cost of fatalities, 872 annually, or the savings that might be generated by preventing other traumatic injuries.

Airbag Non-Deployments Over-Represented in FARS

A joint study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the National Study Center for Trauma and EMS at the University of Maryland School of Medicine has found that the Fatality Analysis Reporting System may not accurately report the non-deployment of frontal airbags. The researchers examined 43,169 fatal crashes in the FARS database (a census of police-reported fatal crashes on public roads) from 1998-2006 calendar years and model years 1994-2006 in which the deployment status of the front air bags was available. The researchers also looked at a comparable data-set of the National Automotive Sampling System Crashworthiness Data System, which is a probability sample of tow-away crashes containing a subset of FARS crashes. In FARS, 18 percent were coded as not deployed in front occupant positions, compared to 9 percent in the NASS/CDC data. The study, entitled “Front Fatal Air Bag Non-Deployments in Frontal Crashes Fatal to Drivers or Right-Front Passengers” published in Traffic Injury Prevention, concluded that FARS data overstate the magnitude of air bag deployment failures; and that better coding was needed.

Among crashes common to both databases, NASS/CDS reported deployments for only 45 percent of fatal non-deployments in the FARS database — front occupant deaths for which FARS had coded non-deployments. An examination of the detailed case reviews in the NASS/CDS found a high-degree of accuracy in the deployment status coding. Based on this, researchers found that 8 percent (weighted estimate) of front occupant deaths in frontal crashes appeared to involve air bag non-deployments; and that less than 2 percent of front occupant deaths represented potential system failures where deployments would have been expected. Further, the study suggested, based on crash characteristics, that air bag deployments were unwarranted in most non-deployments.

WASHINGTON D.C. – At least a year past a Congressional deadline and several years behind its own schedule, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has proposed a new ejection-mitigation standard that would compel automakers to improve their side airbag designs to fully cover up to three rows of passengers and – perhaps – install advanced glazing.

The proposal would establish a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 226 – Ejection Mitigation. The standard would apply to the side windows next to the first three rows of seats in motor vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,000 pounds or less. The performance-based standard would institute a compliance test in which an impactor would be propelled from inside a test vehicle toward the windows. The ejection mitigation system would have to prevent the impactor – based on the mass imposed by a 50th percentile male’s upper torso on the window opening – from moving more than a specified distance beyond the plane of the window. Each side window would be impacted at up to four locations around its perimeter at two time intervals following deployment, to ensure that the airbags remain deployed for the beginning and end stages of a rollover.

According to the NPRM, the intention of the test is to:

“mitigate ejections in different types of rollover and side impact crashes involving different occupant kinematics. The test has been designed to represent the dynamic rollover event. The mass of the impactor, 18 kilograms (kg) (40 lb), in combination with the impact speed discussed below, has sufficient kinetic energy to assure that the ejection mitigation countermeasure is able to protect a far-reaching population of people in real world crashes.”

Don Friedman, inventor of the Jordan Rollover System, a repeatable dynamic rollover test, said that the proposal was good – as far as it went.

“It’s not a dynamic test, but it’s consistent with the plans they had laid out,” Friedman said. “And it is consistent with the roof crush standard in that they are proceeding with a simulated static test. It will have useful consequences that will hopefully be supplanted by a dynamic test in the NCAP which will deal with ejection and roof crush issue.”

This rulemaking comes on the heels of the 2007 upgrade to the FMVSS 214 side-impact pole test, which, in effect, mandated the use of side air curtains to prevent head injuries in side impacts. The agency predicts that manufacturers will meet this new proposed performance requirement by making existing side impact air bag curtains larger and able to stay inflated longer. The agency based the test on computer modeling showing that ejections can occur early and late in the rollover event. Under the proposed test, the impactor would strike the targets at two impact speeds and at two different points in time after the side curtain air bag deployed, to ensure that the curtains retain the occupant through all the stages of a rollover.

Under the NPRM, NHTSA could request that manufacturers describe the conditions under which the ejection mitigation air bags will deploy.

“We do not believe conditions need to be specified in the standard dictating when the sensors should deploy; field data indicate that rollover sensors are deploying when they should in the real world,” the agency said.

The ejection mitigation rulemaking was mandated under the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, the massive transportation bill of 2005. NHTSA was to have issued a final ejection mitigation rule by September 1, 2009, when SAFETEA-LU’s funding expired. The rulemaking was to be part of a broader initiative to reduce rollover crashes and the associated deaths and injuries.

The agency multi-pronged approach included a new rule mandating electronic stability control to improve rollover crash avoidance and a contentious upgrade to the roof crush standard. SAFETEA-LU’s Section 10301 directed NHTSA to complete a rulemaking to reduce complete and partial ejections. The agency’s early planning documents show that it expected to propose occupant containment performance requirement for side windows by 2006.

NHTSA has been studying advanced glazing as an ejection countermeasure since 1995, when it published “Ejection Mitigation Using Advanced Glazings: A Status Report.” The agency issued a second glazing report in 1999 and the following year published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on anti-ejection glazing. But in 2001, the agency reversed itself. It issued a third report downplaying the benefits of anti-ejection glazing and in 2002 terminated the rulemaking, saying that “advanced glazing appeared to increase the risk of neck injury by producing higher neck shear loads and neck moments than impacts into tempered side glazing.” The agency also turned in high estimates for requiring automakers to install such glazing in front side windows ranging from more than $800 million to over $1.3 billion.

Advanced glazing may rise from the regulatory dead under this proposal. The agency drafted the test procedure to encourage the use of advanced laminated glazing in fixed and in moveable windows in addition to or in lieu of the side curtain air bag. Memphis attorney Patrick Ardis, who has been espousing the advantages of laminated glazing for years and has litigated civil suits that involve ejection, says that automakers should opt to use both, because both are necessary to complete the occupant protection system.

“It’s only about 40 years too late,” says Ardis. “The bottom line is that none of the domestic car manufacturers have had to evaluate the real world performance of side windows or any other fixed windows. All they’ve done is a series of drop tests – tests that go back to the1930s. So far, there’s been this giant disconnect between a 1930s test and horrible performance in the real-world.”

In the agency’s tests, the glazing was pre-broken to simulate the likely condition of glazing in a rollover. Tests of vehicles with advanced glazing resulted in an average 51 mm reduction in impactor displacement across the target locations. In other words, an ejection mitigation window curtain plus advanced glazing resulted in the least displacement of the headform. To encourage manufacturers to enhance ejection mitigation curtains with advanced glazing, the NPRM proposed to allow windows of advanced laminated glazing to be in position, but pre-broken to reproduce the state of glazing in an actual rollover crash.

Attorney Jim Gilbert, who tried the nation’s first windshield pop-out case in the mid-1980s, and a leading specialist in rollover litigation, says that the proposal still constitutes an unnecessary delay. Gilbert’s eventual appellate court victory over an international aftermarket windshield replacement company accused of substandard installation practices led to an industry-wide change. But Gilbert, of the Arvada, Colorado-based Gilbert, Ollanick & Komyatte P.C., hasn’t seen OE manufacturers improve their glazing at all.

“Manufacturers aren’t going to start making improvements unless someone tells them they have to and that some one is either a jury or the government,” Gilbert said.

But he decried the pace of the proposed phase-in, in which manufacturers would be required to have 20 percent of their fleets compliant by September 2014, with full implementation by 2017.

“Twenty percent is already being done,” he said. “Sensors and side curtains have been around since the 1990s. Why aren’t they acknowledging the facts – that this is available. It seems like an unreasonable delay after the decades of delay in the industry.”

The agency is accepting comments on this proposal through January.

LOS ANGELES, CA – A Superior Court judge has dismissed Jaguar Land Rover’s claim that the paralyzing injuries sustained by a Simi Valley man were caused by his diving into the roof during a rollover, and awarded him $21.1 million in damages.

Sukhasagar Pannu, 53, a former member of the Hong Kong national field hockey team, was rendered a quadriplegic in the 2003 crash. Pannu was sideswiped by a 16-year-old driver on the 118 freeway, and lost control as he attempted to avoid a collision. Pannu’s Land Rover Discovery vehicle rolled several times. As a result of a spinal cord injury, Pannu permanently lost control of his arms and legs. He now lives with his parents and three children, who provide for his care.

L.A. Superior Court Judge Robert H. O’Brien issued the verdict on May 18 after a bench trial. Garo Mardirossian, the L.A. attorney who represented Pannu, said that both sides opted for a bench trial after receiving rulings on various motions that each side perceived as favorable.

“This case had very sympathetic plaintiff and a pretty good fact pattern. (Pannu) was fault- free,” Madirossian said. “Still, we were very, very concerned until the verdict came in that we would be second-guessed all over the country.”

Land Rover whipped out the tired –but-lately-not-so-true defense that collapsing vehicle roofs don’t kill people – people kill themselves when they fling their heads into the roofs. This theory was lent credence by GM tests in 1985. O’Brien found that the rollover – and Pannu’s injuries – were more likely the result on a vehicle with a high center of gravity and a weak roof. In his written opinion, the judge dismissed the diving defense:

“Finally, the almost complete roof crush of plaintiff’s vehicle occurring in such split second timing leads a reasonable person to immediately assume that the roof came crushing down on plaintiff’s head as it rolled over, causing his head to flex forward and breaking his neck. The hard evidence compels the conclusion that the roof crushed downward such that no driver occupant could survive.”

“He was a very, very bright judge,” said Madirossian.

The Indian auto manufacturer Tata Motors acquired Jaguar Land Rover from Ford Motor Company in 2008. Warren Platt, the defense attorney who represented Jaguar Land Rover said that company planned to appeal.

Juries in Georgia, Colorado and Texas recently delivered verdicts worth more than $46 million against Ford Motor Company and Nissan in three different defect cases. Ford lost in two separate cases involving an Explorer transmission defect and a seat-belt unlatch incident involving a Mercury Cougar. Nissan was found at fault in a crashworthiness case involving a 1995 Pathfinder. Below are summaries of the cases:

Mundy v. Ford Motor Company

A Dekalb County, Georgia jury found that Jessica Mundy’s 2004 Explorer suddenly shifted from park to reverse and ran over her, causing permanent paralysis. The jury awarded Mundy, a 23-year-old accountant, $9.3 million in compensatory damages and $30.7 million in punitive damages. The case centered on a defect in the transmission known as a “false park,” in which the driver shifts the into park and believes the vehicle is stable. After a delay, the truck shifts into reverse and drives backwards.

“There is a space between park and reverse that the gear can get hung up which can allow the vehicle to move back into reverse,” explained Jeff Harris, of the Atlanta firm of Harris, Penn, Lowry, one of Mundy’s lawyers.

Mundy was permanently injured after exiting her Explorer at a post office in Mcdonough, Georgia. She had placed the gear selector into the park position, then noticed the Explorer begin to move backwards. When she tried to reenter and stop the truck, it ran over her. “This has been a problem that Ford has been aware of for more than thirty years,” said lawyer Steve Lowry. “Ford’s own rules of design required them to take action on this problem and they have not done anything in almost thirty years.”

During the trial, the jury heard evidence of 751 complaints regarding Ford vehicles shifting themselves into reverse after being seemingly stable in park. The jury also heard from three other individuals who were injured when their Explorers moved in reverse after each thought the vehicle was in park.

In April, NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation opened a inquiry into park to reverse in 1.4 million 2002 – 2005 Ford Explorers. NHTSA based the Preliminary Evaluation on media questions about the issue during Mundy trial. The agency noted that it had 11 complaints alleging vehicle rollaways after the vehicle was shifted into park. Eight resulted in crashes; four resulted in injuries after the driver was struck by the vehicle. The agency received an additional 61 complainants alleging a failure of the gear shift lever mechanism while shifting from or to the park position.

Hoffman v. Ford Motor Company

In late April, a jury in a Denver U.S. District Court awarded $18 million to a Keenesburg, Colorado woman who was left a quadriplegic after the seat belt of the 1996 Ford Mercury Cougar Coupe unlatched in a rollover crash. Erica Hoffman, 20, had previously settled with the driver of the vehicle and TRW, which manufactured the seatbelt.

The crash occurred on March 14, 2006, as Hoffman and the driver, Shannon Ovancara drove to Weld Central High School. The Cougar Coupe rolled four-and-a-half times, Hoffman was ejected from the vehicle when her seatbelt unlatched.

The jury deliberated for three and a half days before retuning a verdict. Ford was found to be 25 percent at fault and was responsible for $4.23 million of the judgment. Hoffman was represented by Randolph Barnhardt, of Barnhardt, Ekker & McNally LLP of Englewood Colorado.

Ford continues to claim that Hoffman wasn’t wearing her seatbelt and says that it plans to appeal.

Perdue v. Nissan Motor Company

Earlier this month, an East Texas jury awarded $2,197,000 to Rebecca Perdue, a 63-year-old woman who suffered permanent injuries. The jury found Nissan totally responsible for Mrs. Perdue’s injuries.

Perdue suffered extensive injuries to her legs and feet in a November 28, 2006 crash in Tyler, Texas. Perdue was driving a 1995 Nissan Pathfinder, when she was struck by a 2004 Hyundai Tiburon traveling 45-50mph. The Hyundai had swerved to avoid hitting a 2006 Toyota 4Runner that had failed to yield the right of way. The Hyundai struck the left front corner of Perdue’s vehicle in a left frontal offset impact crash, driving the left front tire back through the firewall. The force destroyed the footwell, the floor pan and the toe board survival space area. Perdue suffered fractures to her right tibia, right fibula, and both ankles.

Todd Tracy and co-counsel Melissa Smith of the Dallas-based Tracy Law Firm produced evidence that the design of 1987-1995 Pathfinder was defective for not being able to protect the lower legs in frontal offset impacts. Nissan failed to conduct any frontal offset crash testing or any type of engineering analysis to evaluate the risks associated with lower leg injuries in frontal offset impacts. Nissan’s own testing showed the automaker knew that its front wheel could drive into and through the firewall, toe board, foot well and floor pan area.

At trial, Tracy presented evidence of frontal offset testing dating back to 1969 from the experimental safety vehicle conferences. The research outlined how to design and protect the lower legs during frontal offset impacts. The design alternatives included strengthening the toeboard, footwell and floorpan area so that the survival space for the lower legs would not be destroyed. There were also designs to redirect and redistribute the crash load away from the lower leg survival space.

Tracy also argued that since 1971, vehicle manufacturers knew that frontal offset impacts were the most frequent type of frontal crash and that for nearly 40 years every vehicle manufacturer – except for Nissan, Toyota and Honda – have been conducting offset frontal research in search of ways to protect occupants’ legs in that type of crash. GM, Ford, Chrysler, Mercedes, Volvo, British Leland, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, AMF, the U.S., Canadian and Australian government all had conducted research in this area. But Nissan did not conduct a frontal offset test until 2004.

ATLANTA, GA – After a three-year effort involving the automotive industry, trauma specialists, NHTSA and other federal agencies, the Centers for Disease Control last month issued its first national triage guidelines – and dropped rollover from the criteria of automatic transport to a Level 1 Trauma Center.

For more than 20 years, rollover has been among the criteria that automatically triggered transport to trauma centers most equipped to deal with serious injuries. Such crashes are particularly deadly. Each year, about 10,000 people die in rollovers, accounting for only 3 percent of all crashes, but a third of all fatalities.

But in 2006, the American College of Surgeons, which published its first Field Triage Decision Scheme in 1986, and has revised it periodically since then, removed rollover from its guidelines. These step-by-step schemes are used by emergency medical services technicians to evaluate patients at crash scenes. For instance, for transport to trauma centers of various capabilities: Level 1 providing the highest level of care to Level 4, which offers initial trauma care before transfer to a facility offering higher level of care. (At the time, the state of Maryland broke with the ACS and returned rollover to its new Trauma Decision Tree. The update added “rollover without restraint” to its list of criteria in advising automatic transport to a Trauma Center.)

The decision also alarmed safety advocates, who said that it would result in more deaths from rollovers. Louis Lombardo, a retired Physical Scientist from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s research department, has been lobbying for the return of rollover to the triage criteria ever since.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Lombardo said. “The whole world follows the American College of Surgeons. If you downplay rollover, more people are going to needlessly suffer deaths and disabilities and it will take longer for an appropriate medical response. There are time critical injuries. If rollover is kept out of the triage guidelines, the system is likely to respond less vigorously, less timely and less optimally.”

Lombardo argues that too often the most severe outcomes are the result of time lost in the rescue process.

Currently, about 24,000 people killed in crashes annually were not taken to any medical treatment facility, Lombardo said. The “not taken” are now 56 percent of the people killed each year. Many of the remaining 44 percent who were taken received less than optimal care and died of their injuries. Currently, the 150,000 people seriously injured in crashes each year suffer disabilities from brain injuries, from spinal cord injuries (including quadriplegia and paraplegia), and from crippling orthopedic trauma. Many of these injuries have catastrophic long-term consequences for individuals, families, and society due to lack of timely, optimal quality care.

The CDC began to get involved in the process in 2005. With support from NHTSA, the CDC began facilitating revision of the decision scheme by hosting meetings of a National Expert Panel on Field Triage, which included injury-care providers, public health professionals, automotive industry representatives, and officials from federal agencies. After the ACS Committee on Trauma published its new triage guidelines, the CDC agreed to expand the dissemination of that and future decision schemes.

Part of the rationale for the changes is to introduce efficiency into the trauma care system. In its report on the new triage guidelines, the CDC noted that not all injured patients can or should be transported to a Level I trauma center. Patients with less severe injuries might be served better by transport to a closer ED. Transporting all injured patients to Level I trauma centers, regardless of the severity of their injuries, could burden those facilities unnecessarily and make them less available for the most severely injured patients.

“The cost savings goes back to the idea that if you matched the patient’s needs with right resources, I believe we will have some cost savings,” says Dr. Scott M. Sasser, of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and a member of the expert panel.

In a recent news conference, Sasser and Dr. Richard Hunt, of Emory University School of Medicine and another panel member, defended the CDC’s decision to follow ACS’s lead.

Sasser noted that the triage literature was sparse but said that the committee evaluated the rollover injury and fatality statistics and determined that ejection and partial ejection were the common elements of serious injuries in rollover crashes. These criteria remain in the decision scheme for transport to Level 1 trauma centers, they said. Hunt and Sasser also argued that under the new triage guidelines, the elements of just the first two steps in the decision – which include evaluations of respiration, coma, blood pressure, penetrating injuries, paralysis and serious fractures – would most probably result in a rollover victim being sent to a Level 1 trauma center. Ejection and partial ejection from the automobile are included in Step 3.

Lombardo says the CDC focused only on what happens after the EMS arrives and ignored how the guidelines would be used by 911 dispatchers.

“The question of when the dispatchers have enough information and authority to send EMS was not addressed,” he says.  “It is that delay between time of crash to time of EMS arrival that often results in needless death and disability. The discussion on ejection, for example, was frustrating because many instances of partial ejection can’t be determined by good Samaritans as they pass by and report a rollover by cell phone to 911.”

Lombardo also disputed the claim that there wasn’t enough triage literature available. The CDC ignored much of the work done by NHTSA and other resources, he says. Since 1978, NHTSA has collected and published data on more than 300,000 fatal rollover crashes.

“The CDC researchers cited a study of 621 crashes to support their decision to remove the Rollover and Extrication criteria,” Lombardo said.  “How many cases of fatalities did they use?  How many cases of brain injured survivors?  How many cases of spinal cord injuries?  How many cases of occult organ injuries?  How many cases of preventable deaths were identified in which the EMS system could have been better employed?”

The CDC, however, will not be examining these questions going forward. The Center did not include a mechanism to collect data to determine how these changes would impact patient care or cost.

“This was a pretty intense process – first-of-its-kind, with multiple disciplines looking at these issues,” Hunt says. “We also recognize that this was a first-time endeavor, and no matter how exhaustive we were. We realized we could have missed things.”

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.