Abstract
It is fundamental in injury prevention to evaluate the safety levels of new technologies. To prevent AIS 1 neck injuries in rear impacts a number of new seat designs have recently been released. Furthermore, a number of neck injury criteria have been developed. This study evaluates a number of current production seats in order to assess the AIS 1 neck injury protection potential at four impact severities in a sled simulating a rear impact. Current available criteria such as NIC, Nkm and Nij were calculated from the tests. It was found that certain criteria could occur at different phases of the dummy motion in various tests. The paper offers an assessment of a range of seat performances and the associated neck injury criteria results. Therefore, the results of the study could form the basis for decisions regarding which criteria to use for the evaluation of vehicle seats and anti-whiplash systems.