Analysis of rollover accident factors and injury causation

One of the most violent automobile accidents in terms of occupant injury exposure is the rollover crash. In this environment the most consistently noted damaged area of the vehicle has been roof crush. Hence, it has been hypothesized that the prevention of significant roof crush will result in reduced injury severity. An analysis was made of the clinical accident investigation reports of 249 rollover crashes out of over 2,500 accident cases available. The results of the study disclosed that average occupant injuries in rollovers are at the lower end of the injury severity scale and are similar in severity to occupants in all other types of crashes. However, twice as many fatal injuries occur in rollovers than in all accidents and two-thirds of these fatalities are due to unrestrained occupant ejection. From these data it would appear that containment of occupants within the vehicle would provide a significant reduction of injury severity levels, and that reducing roof crush in rollover accidents will be of little significance in injury severity reduction.