The National Crash Analysis Center (NCAC) received $106,000 in funding from the German automotive manufacturer consortium Working Group AK 251, "Accident Analysis," comprised of BWM, Audi, Daimler, VW, and Porsche, to assess the real world safety trade-offs of the belted vs. unbelted occupant testing requirements of FMVSS 208, the U.S. standard on occupant crash protection in frontal crashes.
Principal Investigators:
- Professor Ken Digges, Ph.D., P.E., Research Director, Vehicle Safety and Biomechanics Research
- Randa Radwan Samaha, Adjunct Faculty, Director of Advanced Research
Objective:
The objective is to assess the real world safety trade-offs of the belted vs. unbelted occupant testing requirements of FMVSS 208 (Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and Regulations, U.S. Department of Transportation, Standard No. 208), the U.S. standard on occupant crash protection in frontal crashes.
In addition to performing a review of recent studies, the GW team will conduct analyses of the national accident databases in North America, with analytical methods focused on the strengths of each data collection system.
Crash involvement, in contrast to vehicle registrations, will be the focus as the exposure metrics for this study. GW plans to analyze the Canadian National Collision DataBase (NCDB), in addition to the U.S. databases.