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.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Not bad – considering. With a few variations, that’s largely the reaction to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s final roof crush rule published earlier this month. Nearly four years after deciding to amend the antiquated standard, after howls of protest from automakers and consumer advocates, and after the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety substantially raised the bar to include roof a strength standard for a Top Safety Pick rating, the agency delivered a rule that was better than many expected.

The final version of the rule is notably different from its first proposal in August 2005 on four key points:

The new strength to weight ratio (SWR) for passenger vehicles with a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating of 6,000 pounds is 3.0;

The applicability of the standard now extends to vehicles in the 6,000 to 10,000, which will have to a meet a SWR of 1.5;

A two-sided roof test is required for all vehicles.

The provision to preempt state laws was dropped.

Also for the final rule, the agency maintained an intrusion limit of 5 inches of platen travel as well as adopting a headroom requirement, but the agency decided to require a headform positioning fixture instead of a test dummy. NHTSA said that it was basing the headroom requirement on new data that established a statistically significant relationship between intrusion and injury for belted occupants.

The new roof crush standard will be phased in over a three-year period, beginning in September 2012.

The proposed preemption provision – a widespread inter-agency practice during the administration of President George W. Bush – drew the ire of several groups. Plaintiffs’ attorneys argued it would abrogate consumers’ rights. States’ attorneys general interpreted preemption as a usurpation of state’s rights. Congress members chastised the agency saying that it had no authority to circumvent its intent in passing safety laws.

In the final rule, the agency gave its decision to drop the provision a passing mention: “We have reconsidered the tentative position presented in the NPRM. We do not foresee any potential State tort requirements that might conflict with today’s final rule. Without any conflict, there could not be any implied preemption.”

Don Slavik, an attorney with Habush, Habush & Rottier, S.C. in Milwaukee, was among a group that coordinated the objections to preemption. Slavik credits the team of lawyers and safety advocates for pressing the administration and explaining the fallacy of preemption to agency officials. The opposing philosophies of the new Obama administration didn’t hurt either, he said. “Attorneys and consumer advocates assisted in getting out the word and enlisting the others to comment,” he added. “Of particular importance were comments from legislators and senators saying that they did not intend to preempt in this area and NHTSA was wrong. If you persevere, Congress warned that they would re-legislate specifically in this area.”

As for the rule itself, close observers, such as Don Friedman, co-inventor of the Jordan Rollover System, a repeatable rollover test device, said that the 3.0 strength-to-weight ratio would actually result in automakers building stronger roofs. Variability in the test, coupled with variability in roof strengths among the same models built at different plants, means that automakers will have to build in an ample margin to ensure their vehicles pass the compliance test. Ford, in particular, told the agency that the variability could be as much as 30 percent.

“If you understand that, then the standard as written is really a standard of 3.9,” he said. “It is also the standard we predicted from JRS dynamic testing. This is a standard that will reduce the rollover injury rate by half.”

An IIHS spokesman also deemed it “a pretty good standard.”

“It’s hard to know right now how this plays out in terms of what the automakers will actually have to do, but clearly roofs will get much stronger,” said Russ Rader of the IIHS. “Our main criticism is that the phase-in is just way too long, because we’ve heard from some automakers they will meet our 4.0 very quickly. Also, NHTSA still woefully underestimated the benefits of the standards, but at least they got past that and made it more stringent than we thought it was going to be.”

Several months ago, the institute announced that beginning in 2010, automakers who want IIHS’s coveted Top Safety Pick designation would 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 entity most publicly disappointed with the requirements of the new rule was Public Citizen, which released a statement jabbing the rule as falling “far short of mandating vehicle improvements that will significantly reduce the 10,500 annual fatalities from rollover crashes.” Public Citizen criticized the old 1.5 SWR for larger vehicles as inadequate but its biggest beef was the standard’s continued reliance on a quasi-static test. The advocacy group accused NHTSA of ignoring the 2005 congressional intent to consider a dynamic test that could mimic real-world conditions.

NHTSA said that it developed its upgrade with the results of their research program in mind. The agency testing program included full vehicle dynamic rollover testing, inverted vehicle drop testing, and comparing inverted vehicle drop testing to a modified FMVSS No. 216 test. After considering the results of the testing, the agency concluded that the quasi-static procedure provided enough of a suitable representation of the real-world roof dynamic loading conditions. Rollovers were too complex and chaotic to develop a dynamic test suitable for a safety standard.

“NHTSA agrees, however, with pursuing a dynamic test as our ultimate goal. We would like to have one for rollover crashes just as we do for front and side crashes. Unfortunately, we cannot adopt or even propose one now because of issues related to test repeatability, a dummy, and lack of injury criteria. We are pursuing further research for a dynamic test, but we expect that it will take a number of years to resolve these issues. In the meantime, we do not want to delay a significant upgrade of FMVSS No. 216 that will save 135 lives each year,” the agency said.

Friedman was sanguine about another delay in adopting a dynamic test. He has made several public demonstrations of how the JRS can measure the injury and ejection potential of vehicles in rollovers and can definitively identify vehicle safety component defects and their causal relationship to death and injury in accidents. He has also been presenting the Jordan Rollover System test data to NHTSA officials since 2003. With the final rule published, Friedman is looking ahead.

“It’s all good. I think the next thing is the dynamic test as the NCAP (New Car Assessment Program) test,” he said.

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.