Overview of serious thorax injuries in European frontal car crash accidents and implications for crash test dummy development

For the EC 7th Framework Action COVER and to support the THORAX and THOMO projects, the objectives of this work were to: define the current state of knowledge on thorax injuries in frontal impacts; extend that knowledge to define in detail thorax injuries fro diverse user groups; and recommend priorities for biomechanical testing, crash test dummy development, and injury risk functions that would be most relevant for future advanced frontal impact dummies. This paper brings together accident data analyses from the UK, Germany and France to address these objectives. Based on the results of these analyses it was observed that there was an increased risk for older occupants to sustain a torso injury. There also tends to be a greater torso injury risk for occupants seated in the front passenger seat compared with the driver's seat. Fractures to the ribs and then the sternum were the most frequently occurring types of injury at the AIS 2 severity level. Injuries to the lungs were the most frequently occurring visceral injuries to the torso.