Delta-v slope as an indicator of injury

Objective This study's objective was to examine a crash severity characteristic and the relationship as an indicator of abdominal injury causation. Methods Data were analyzed from 23 CIREN case vehicles involved in a frontal type collision, had an AIS 2+ abdominal injury, and contained an electronic data recorder (EDR) download. Data was downloaded from the NHTSA and IIHS crash test databases for comparison. Data was run through a MATLAB algorithm calculating the maximum velocity-time profile slope. This data was compared to the available crash tests. Results The CIREN vehicle EDR velocity-time slopes ranged from 233 m/s(2) to 434 m/s(2) for crashes with a delta-v range of 42 km/h to 77 km/h. NHTSA NCAP comparable data was available for all cases, and the slopes ranged from 263 m/s(2) to 405 m/s(2) calculated from the collected accelerometer. Three comparable tests were available from the IIHS database and the calculated slopes ranged from 252 m/s(2) to 298 m/s(2). Four test vehicles had EDR data, two each from NHTSA and IIHS and slopes ranged from 245 m/s(2) to 281 m/s(2). The crash test EDRs slope calculations were lower than the accelerometer data. Nine of the 12 case vehicles had slope values lower than the comparable NCAP accelerometer velocity-time slopes. Conclusions Vehicle velocity-time profile can be beneficial to examine the characteristics of crash severity and potential injury. This small sample of field crashes did not indicate a clear relationship of abdominal injury related to crash severity measured by the EDR delta-v slope. EDR results can be considered when determining crash severity, but the limitations need to be understood.