Side impact safety

In 2008, 2,528 people were killed and 26,034 were seriously injured in road traffic accidents in Great Britain (GB). About half the people killed were car occupants and just over one third of these car occupants were killed in side impacts.

Over the past 10 years, since the introduction of the side impact regulation, much research work has been performed to develop new and modified test procedures to improve the level of occupant protection offered by vehicles in side impacts. In Europe, this research has been co-ordinated by the European Enhanced Vehicle safety Committee (EEVC).

To inform UK policy regarding side impact protection and provide the UK contribution to EEVC activities, the following tasks were performed by this project:

• Provide the UK input to the EEVC activity to estimate benefits and associated costs for potential modifications to UNECE Regulation 95.

• Perform a series of three crash tests to determine the implications of an Advanced European Mobile Deformable Barrier (AE-MDB) test with a higher test speed, in particular how much the occupant protection level in a current vehicle would have to be improved to meet the requirements of such a test.

• Assess the performance of WorldSID, in particular the new ‘RibEye’ system for measuring rib deflection, using component tests and a full-scale crash test. Investigate compatibility related side impact issues, in particular the effect of the development of the fronts of vehicles for improved performance in frontal impacts on their performance when impacting the side of a car.