Abstract
Safety devices are more and more present in the cars, with the aim to improve occupant protection, in terms of active and passive systems. Crashworthiness of body structures and protection devices such airbags and belts improved significantly in recent years due to better knowledge in accidentology and to consumer and regulatory testing.
One of the main goal of the present study is to establish a synthesis of the real-world accidents involving cars equipped with such called advanced protection systems. To do so, 3 generations of cars are compared : cars produced before 1990, between 1991 and 1996, and from 1997. It is shown that in frontal impact the protection of both front seat occupants has improved in large proportions ; the occupant upper body is the area where the reduction of injury severity is considerable. As regards side impact, the improvements are also observed thanks to structural enhancement and side airbags, but the statistical samples are not significant. Despite those improvements there are still areas in passive safety which requires the attention of automotive engineers and research laboratories : accidentology and biomechanics. For the first one , more harmonised data collection and analysis is needed to ensure better comparison of samples between countries. In the field of biomechanics the safety community needs to have better tools, in terms of biofidelity and injury prediction. For instance in frontal regulatory crash tests world-wide, the Hybrid III dummy, which was developed in the 70's is still in use. It is suggested that more resources and efforts are to be dedicated to those crucial areas. In addition the use of mathematical tools is discussed in the frame of reduced development lead-time.