RESTRAINED DRIVERS IN FRONTAL CRASHES: SOME EFFECTS OF SEAT-BELTS AND AIRBAGS DEDUCED FROM FIELD STUDIES

The seat belt, when properly worn, greatly reduces the risk of serious injury to the occupants in a frontal crash. However, by reducing the risk of major or fatal injury there is an occasional trade-off with injuries the seat belt itself can cause on the load bearing surfaces of the body. This paper found that out of a sample of 190 frontal impact cases, 50 percent of restrained occupants sustained some sort of injury directly from the seat belt and that 12 percent sustained injuries of a moderate or greater nature. In modern times, airbags designed to complement the effect of the seat belt (otherwise known as supplementary restraint systems) have been introduced. When comparing injury rates in the same sample of drivers (regardless of contact source) according to whether they were in non-airbag or airbag-deployed vehicles, a decrease in injury rates particularly to the neck, chest and abdomen were observed in the airbag-deployed cases. An interesting observation is that the non-airbag cases were found to be involved in higher median severity collisions as compared to the airbag deployed cases. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see IRRD 895304.