Car Crack Up

Posted by admin on Feb 12, 2010 in Automotive Quotes | 0 comments

Recognizing that current Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) are no guarantee that the cars we drive are safe at speeds outside the boundaries of these requirements, both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) have adopted slightly more rigorous testing standards.

The current FMVSS require manufacturers to crash their cars into fixed barriers at speeds of up to 30 mph. Anthropomorphic test dummies riding inside are used to measure the effects of the crash via visual analysis of high speed film recorded during the crash and the data recorded from the dummies’ on-board array of accelerometers. While many of us in the automotive safety/clinical/public health fields have been critical of some of the methodologies and/or standards used in this analysis, such as the Head Injury Criterion (HIC) used as an allowance for head inertial loading, this paper will look only at some of the recent IIHS crash tests.As physicians who regularly manage the effects of motor vehicle trauma, we have a duty to our patients to pass along important information regarding the effectiveness and importance of new (and old) safety systems, their proper use, and perhaps also to provide input on issues of crashworthiness when our patients are considering the purchase of a new family car, van or sport utility vehicle. This article will provide you with some guidance and perhaps the raw material for a patient newsletter or front office handout.