Equitable Occupant Protection

Published: Jun 2024

Citation: https://doi.org/10.58446/exyu7650

ISBN:

Author: Caroline Wallbank, Karthikeyan Ekambaram and Mark Bell

Pages: 46

Reference: PPR2048

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Ensuring transport is safe, reliable, and inclusive is central to the UK Department for Transport’s (DfT) aim to develop and deliver a transport network that works for everyone. DfT commissioned this study to examine whether there is any evidence of inequity in injury outcomes for seat-belted adult occupants due to characteristics. Real-world collision data from the Road Accident In-Depth Studies (RAIDS) database collected between 2013 and 2023 were used for this study. Multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted to evaluate the role of occupant characteristics on overall and specific body region injury risks for belted adult front-seat occupants in similar frontal and side-impact crashes. Age was a significant predictor of overall maximum AIS injury in both frontal and side impacts. The older occupants were more prone to overall MAIS 2+ outcomes in both impact types. In frontal impacts, ageing increases the risk of sustaining a MAIS 2+ injury risk in the head, chest, and abdomen body regions. The thorax was the only body region where age significantly influenced the MAIS injury outcome in the side impacts. Occupant sex was a significant predictor of overall MAIS injury only in side impacts. The risk to female was significantly higher when compared to their male counterparts. In both frontal and side impacts, lower extremity ;injuries to females were significantly higher than males. The study suggests that physiological differences between age and sex have a significant influence on injury severity outcomes. Age and sex-specific injury risk outcomes, particularly to the thorax region for older occupants and lower extremity region for female occupants, suggest the need for crashworthiness improvements that can be addressed through regulatory and consumer crash testing programmes.

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