AIS 3+ Thoracic Injuries Among Drivers in Real-World Motor Vehicle Frontal Crashes: The Effect of Impact Direction, Impact Location and Status of Seat Belt

This paper, comparing seat belt usage, investigates the combined effects of specific impact directions and impact locations on the serious-to-maximum thoracic injuries of drivers in frontal impact based on the 1995-2010 data from the United States Department of Transportation (US DOT) National Automotive Sampling System-Crashworthiness Data System (NASS-CDS). The selected sample is classified by three impact locations (distributed, offset and corner) and two impact directions (pure frontal and oblique), resulting in a total of six crash configurations. The risks of thoracic injury and its anatomic structure injury for drivers, considering using seat belt or not independently, in different frontal crash configurations are evaluated. The relative risks are computed also. Overall, results of the analyses reveal that the effectiveness of thorax protection by the seat belt is significant. But for thoracic organ injuries, in frontal corner impact, using seat belt may not decrease the risk of serious-to-maximum injuries significantly, as in frontal distributed impact for skeletal injuries.