SAE International Journal of Transportation Safety 2022 Special Issue: Occupant Protection & Crashworthiness for ADS-Equipped Vehicles JRN-TS-SI-01

Volume 10, Issue 2, 2022

All of the papers in this special issue bring together research focused on the ADS-equipped vehicle seating and crash environment that could assist in improving the safety tools to ensure better occupant protection and crashworthiness in these vehicles under a variety of loading conditions.

Special Issue Co-Editors:
Dr. Kevin Moorhouse, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Dr. John Bolte IV, The Ohio State University

The SAE International Journal of Transportation Safety provides a forum for peer-reviewed scholarly works concerning all aspects of injury causation and mitigation associated with any transportation system. This includes safety mechanisms, impact and injury response, and tolerance on multiple scales, with the objective of developing restraint, vehicle, and infrastructure environments that are safer for the occupant, rider, passerby, and warfighter.

The movement toward vehicles equipped with ADS (Automated Driving Systems) will allow for non-traditional vehicle occupant seating configurations. Recent studies have suggested some occupants are interested in not only facing each other during extended trips, but specifically seated in “camp-fire” settings, such as around a table. The numerous potential seating configurations could change a traditional frontal crash into a scenario where one occupant is loaded in the typical frontal direction, while another undergoes a rear-end impact and yet a third occupant is loaded in an oblique manner. In addition, some occupants are interested in reclining their seats when not driving, thus adding even more complexity to keeping occupants safe in these ADS-equipped vehicle crash scenarios. Even in ADS-equipped vehicles without rotated or reclined seats, there is an expectation that passengers will be more likely to sit in the rear seat, which presents different restraint challenges than for the typical driver/passenger front row seats. Furthermore, although ADS-equipped vehicles are expected to be safer and crash less than human-driven vehicles, the nature of the crash conditions and pulses for ADS-equipped vehicles might differ and are largely unknown. In cases where an ADS-equipped vehicle is involved in a crash, emergency braking or collision avoidance maneuvers are likely, which could reduce the effectiveness of restraints designed specifically for in-position occupants.

Article Titles:
- Human Head and Neck Kinematics during Autonomous and Human Braking in Three Initial Head Positions
- Muscle Activation Affects Kinematic Response and Injury Risk in Non-Traditional Oblique Impact Scenarios Assessed with a Head and Neck Finite Element Model
- Crash Pulse Prediction Using Regression Algorithm with Gradient Descent Optimization Method for Integrated Safety Systems
- Generic Crash Pulses Representing Future Accident Scenarios of Highly Automated Vehicles
- Supplementing Future Occupant Safety Assessments with Severe Intersection Crashes Selected Using the SAFER Human Body Model
- Effects of Seatback Recline and Belt Restraint Type on PMHS Responses and Injuries in Rear-Facing Frontal Impacts
- Biofidelity Evaluation of THOR-50M in Rear-Facing Seating Configurations Using an Updated Biofidelity Ranking System
- Numerical Investigation of the Performance of Current Vehicle Rear Seats using Finite Element Analysis
- Evaluation and Comparison of Thoracic Injury Risk for the Hybrid III and THOR 50th-Percentile Male Anthropomorphic Test Devices in the Rear Seat during Frontal Impacts
- Submarining Protection for 50th-Percentile Male Anthropomorphic Test Devices in the Rear Seat during Frontal Crash Sled Tests
- Understanding the Influence of Seat Belt Geometries on Belt-to-Pelvis Angle Can Help Prevent Submarining