Abstract
One of the most frequent types of vehicle collision is side impact in which serious injuries occur mainly due to the structural inadequacy of the side doors. The aim of this pa- per is to contribute to the safety of vehicles by offering a new design concept to improve side protection of vehicles.
In this research some of the decorative components of the side doors were replaced with high tensile strength steel bars of different shapes, and the toughened glass side window was replaced with a polycarbonate window A number of side crash tests were conducted to examine the effect of such a modification.