The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA /ˈnɪtsə/ NITS-ə) is an agency of the U.S. federal government, part of the Department of Transportation. It describes its mission as "Save lives, prevent injuries, reduce vehicle-related crashes" related to transportation safety in the United States.NHTSA is charged with writing and enforcing Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards as well as regulations for motor vehicle theft resistance and fuel economy, as part of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) system. FMVSS 209 was the first standard to become effective on March 1, 1967. NHTSA also licenses vehicle manufacturers and importers, allows or blocks the import of vehicles and safety-regulated vehicle parts, administers the vehicle identification number (VIN) system, develops the anthropomorphic dummies used in U.S. safety testing as well as the test protocols themselves, and provides vehicle insurance cost information. The agency has asserted preemptive regulatory authority over greenhouse gas emissions, but this has been disputed by such state regulatory agencies as the California Air Resources Board.The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards are contained in the United States 49 CFR 571. Additional federal vehicle standards are contained elsewhere in the CFR. Another of NHTSA's major activities is the creation and maintenance of the data files maintained by the National Center for Statistics and Analysis. In particular, the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), has become a resource for traffic safety research not only in the United States, but throughout the world. Research contributions using FARS by researchers from many countries appear in many non-U.S. technical publications, and provide a significant database and knowledge bank on the subject. Even with this database, conclusive analysis of crash causes often remains difficult and controversial, with experts debating the veracity and statistical validity of results.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.
To address the rising increase in fatal and serious traffic injuries, the ODOT Traffic Safety Research Roadmap establishes a structured, five-year research agenda listing research concepts for funding through ODOT Research Unit’s annual funding cycle as well as other funding opportunities. The study identifies 51 priority traffic safety research needs, spanning the Safe Systems topics of safe people, safe vehicles, safe speeds, safe roads, and post-crash care. An implementation playbook suggests pathways of achieving the desired research needs to support transportation safety practice.
Enhancing child occupant protection requires a clear understanding of how seatbelt restraint parameters influence crash injury metrics. Real-world vehicles mostly include pretensioner and load limiter technologies to mitigate injuries, but rear seat restraints often do not include these. The FMVSS No. 213 test bench closely represents current restraint systems but does not involve such active vehicle restraint features. This study explores the response of the Large Omnidirectional Child ATD to evaluate potential injury mitigation under FMVSS No. 213 frontal sled test conditions. A simulation-based full factorial design was implemented in LS-DYNA to vary pretensioner retraction, retractor load-limiting thresholds, and webbing payout, with injury measures including head acceleration, head excursion, chest compression, and abdominal pressure twin sensors (APTS). Statistical evaluation using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey-Kramer post-hoc tests quantified main and interaction effects. Pretensioners consistently reduced head excursion and acceleration, while load limiters lowered chest compression but increased excursion, illustrating a performance trade-off. Webbing payout behavior showed strong coupling to load-limiting thresholds, revealing notable parameter interdependencies. These results demonstrate that integrating pretensioners and load limiters into child restraint systems could yield meaningful safety benefits but must be optimized holistically to balance competing injury metrics. The study provides both empirical insight and a statistical framework for evaluating advanced restraint configurations in pediatric occupant simulations.
Thoracic injuries are common for belted occupants in frontal motor vehicle crashes. However, there remains a lack of female post-mortem human subject (PMHS) data in the literature to generate female-specific biomechanical response corridors and evaluate engineering tools such as anthropomorphic test devices (ATDs) and computational human body models (HBMs). Additionally, the effect of breast tissue on thoracic response has not been directly investigated despite female ATDs and HBMs having features representing breasts. As such, this study sought to utilize simplified frontal hub impacts to (1) generate female PMHS thoracic response corridors both with breasts positioned with a bra and without breasts (no bra) and (2) preliminarily explore the influence of breasts on the thoracic responses of female PMHS. Twelve female PMHS (9 small and 3 midsize) were subjected to frontal impacts at mid-sternum with a 14.0 kg circular impactor at 4.3 m/s in conditions with and without breasts. Force versus deflection (FD) response corridors were generated, and comparisons were made between groups and to scaled FD corridors representing female response. Overall, female PMHS with and without breasts displayed differences in FD response compared to scaled corridors in terms of the shape of the initial response and peak force and deflection. Additionally, female PMHS with breasts produced lower peak force and greater peak deflection compared to those without breasts. These results suggest the importance of collection and evaluation of female biomechanical data that can be used for continued evaluation of female-specific safety tools as well as the further reduction of injury risk for all occupants during motor vehicle crashes.
This study investigates female post-mortem human subject (PMHS) responses and injuries, comparing them to previously published data from male PMHS tested at a change in velocity (delta-V) of 56 kph in high-speed rear-facing frontal- impact (HSRFFI) scenarios. Twelve small female PMHS were subjected to the same HSRFFI pulse. The subjects were positioned in reinforced production seats, identical to those from the previous male PMHS studies, and set to recline angles of either 25 or 45 degrees. Instrumentation was used to measure kinematics of the head, spine, pelvis, and ribs. Whole-body kinematics were recorded using motion capture. Female PMHS consistently showed lower head restraint, seatback, and lap belt loads compared to males across all test conditions (Bio Rank System [BRS] scores >1.0), with BRS scores for head restraint forces as high as 4.0. While head and T1 kinematics were consistent with males in all-belt-to-seat (ABTS) conditions (BRS < 1.0), significant differences were found in other body regions (BRS>1.0). Female PMHS had larger head forward rotation and smaller pelvis Z-axis displacement (less ramping) than males in the fixed D-ring (FDR) conditions, leading to major discrepancies (BRS>2.0). In addition, female chest deflection was smaller in one FDR condition (BRS=1.98), and tibia acceleration onset was earlier. Female PMHS sustained severe to critical rib fractures (Abbreviated Injury Scale [AIS]3-5) similar to males. However, five females in the FDR conditions and one in the ABTS condition sustained sacral fractures, an injury not seen in males. Females also had a higher frequency of lower extremity fractures (7 of 12) and vertebral body fractures (7 of 12) compared to males. These findings suggest that existing male PMHS data may not adequately predict responses and injury risks for female PMHS, emphasizing the need for female-specific biomechanical data to enhance safety tools and models in HSRFFI scenarios.
Objective: Several studies have documented the relative risk or odds of injury and fatality for females versus males in motor vehicle crashes (Parenteau et al. 2013, Forman et al. 2019, Brumbelow and Jermakian, 2022; Noh et al. 2022). Though, none combined National Automotive Sampling System-Crashworthiness Data System (NASSCDS) and Crash Investigation Sampling System (CISS). The aim of this study was to document the relative odds of various injury outcomes for females versus males while considering a broad range of crash types, pre-crash and crash variables, and occupant characteristics. Methods: Multivariable logistic regression was carried out to study the odds of injury for females versus males. A select imputation method (Hot Deck, Approximate Bayesian Bootstrap) was applied as part of efforts to create multivariable logistic regression models for 25 different injury outcomes associated with occupants (age 13 years and older) involved in passenger vehicle crashes published in NASS-CDS (2000 to 2015) and CISS (2017-2021). Both pre-crash (n=7) and crashworthiness (n=22) predictor variables were considered, but only significant variables at p<0.10 level were retained in final models. Six crash-type models were produced for each injury outcome; one that included all crashes, one for each of four different planar crash types (frontal, near-side, farside, rear), and one for crashes involving rollover. These six sets of crash-type models were expanded further to include a model version that included both pre-crash/environment and crashworthiness predictor variables and one model limited to crashworthiness predictors only. Different than other recent studies, all crash types, occupant restraint conditions, and seating positions were considered. Occupant sex was retained in all models to facilitate female versus male injury outcome odds ratio (OR) assessments. Results: Female versus male injury OR estimates for 300 unique models are presented. Females had significantly higher odds of injury than males in 36 models (OR>1.0, p-value <0.05). This contrasts with 43 models where females had significantly lower odds (OR<1.0, p <= 0.05). For the remaining 221 models, there was a near even split in how often the odds of injury were non-significantly higher (n=103) and non-significantly lower (n=114) for females as compared to males (p>0.05). In four cases, the OR estimate was 1.00. Amongst the results, there was a trend for females to have higher odds of AIS 2+ injuries (MAIS 2+ OR=1.75 and 1.69 for Full and Crashworthiness models, respectively for the All Crashes dataset). These increases included higher estimates for lower extremity injuries in frontal crashes, consistent with earlier studies (e.g., Forman et al. 2019). However, for certain AIS 2+ (neck, thorax) and AIS 3+ injuries (head, neck, thorax), females had significantly lower odds of injury (p<0.05). The trends for reduced odds of injury for females were most prevalent in non-frontal crash models.
