Experimental assessment of vehicle performance and injury risk for cutaway buses using tilt table and modified dolly rollover tests

Publication date: November 2019Source: Accident Analysis & Prevention, Volume 132Author(s): MohammadReza Seyedi, Sungmoon Jung, Grzegorz Dolzyk, Jerzy WekezerAbstractBackgroundRollover crashes of buses occur less frequently than do those involving passenger cars; however, they are associated with higher fatality rates. During rollover crashes, a vehicle experiences multidirectional acceleration and multiple impacts, yielding a complex interaction between structural components and its occupants. A better understanding of vehicle and occupant’s motion, structural deformation, and vehicle and road interactions are necessary to improve the safety of the occupants during this event. One of the key factors in rollover crashworthiness assessment is to investigate the relationship between the strength of the vehicle’s structure and the risk of injury outcomes. However, rollover crashes involving buses have received less research attention than have those involving passenger cars. Experimental studies in bus rollover safety have mainly focused on the structural integrity of the passenger compartment without considering the occupant responses. The main goal of this research is to evaluate the rollover mechanism and associated injury risk during two experimental rollover tests for a paratransit cutaway bus that is commonly used by transit agencies.MethodsThe modified dolly rollover (MDR) and tilt table (TT) tests were conducted using a similar bus and anthropomorphic test device (AT...
Source: Accident Analysis and Prevention - Category: Accident Prevention Source Type: research