Abstract
Introduction. Vehicle impact severity has been used to infer whiplash injury to asymptomatic healthy occupants in low-speed rear-end collisions. However, this depends greatly upon closing speed, which is difficult to estimate a posteriori, as well as the weights of the vehicles involved. The proposed paper explains how closing speed can be accurately estimated based upon each vehicle's damage cost estimate, make, model, and occupant weights.
Methods. Low-speed bumper damage cost data for staged collisions are available from various sources. By comparing damage from a particular accident to damage reported from available test data, we show how to use available analysis techniques to determine whether an actual two vehicle impact was more or less severe than published data for low-speed impacts.
Results. Using available cost data from staged bumper tests on a variety of individual vehicles and a published analysis procedure, this work demonstrates how to approximate the closing speed of actual collisions. This closing speed can then be used to determine the vehicle loadings and environment of seated occupants.
Conclusions. Once the range of likely peak vehicle responses is known, it can be used to approximate cervical and lumbar loading of the occupants through comparison with existing surrogate test results and biomechanical simulation analyses. The current authors have previously developed and validated an analytical model that accurately predicts vehicle responses to low-speed impacts. The present paper shows how to combine results from this simulation procedure with information from damage cost databases to approximate closing speed for a particular rear-end collision.