CAR OCCUPANT INJURY PATTERNS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO CHEST AND ABDOMINAL INJURIES CAUSED BY SEAT BELT LOADING

This is a two-part paper. The first section concerns how injuries of front seat car occupants occur. They received injuries of severity Abbreviated Injury Scale equal to or greater than 2 (AIS) in a car crash, compared to a group of fatal occupants. The paper compares the nature and severity of injuries sustained by survivors and fatalities in comparable collision circumstances. In frontal impacts, restrained front seat occupants tend to receive injuries from the steering wheel and/or seat belt, to the head and chest respectively. Many occupants survived but with serious thoracic injury caused by seat belt loading. This problem is addressed by specifically examining seat-belt injuries to the chest and abdomen. In part two, AIS 1 injuries to the chest and abdomen were found to be very common. 6.1% of the total database were found to have sustained an AIS equal to or greater than 2 injury to either the chest or abdomen caused only by the seat belt. The majority of these injuries were fractures to the ribs and sternum. The chest was more frequently injured than the abdomen. Types of injury, trends in injury severities, and factors such as speed change and occupant characteristics are discussed. 0.4% of occupants on the database sustained fatal injuries from their seat belt. (A) For the covering abstract of the conference see IRRD 871381.