Opportunities for Injury Reduction in Rollover Crashes

The National Automotive Sampling System/Crashworthiness Data System (NASS/CDS) remains the best US data source for understanding the magnitude of the opportunities for reducing rollover injuries to the various body regions. However, judicious analysis techniques are required to address the many confounding factors, including but not limited to the consequence of recent safety improvements such as electronic stability control and increased roof strength. To better assess the effect of recent safety improvements, the population of drivers in rollovers in light vehicles model year 2000 and later was examined. To address crash severity, the number of quarter-turns was used. Injuries were separated by body region and the HARM method of aggregating injuries was used to provide added weighting to the more severe injuries. For belted drivers in near-side rollovers, the fourth quarter-turn contained the most HARM and the highest injury risk, especially for chest injuries. For belted drivers in far-side rollovers, most of the chest injury HARM is fairly uniformly distributed between quarter-turns 2, 4, 6 and 8.