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Injury Causes and Costs of High Speed Car Crashes

The introduction of both front and side air bags and other technological advances in vehicle restraint systems, designed to protect occupants in both front and side impact crashes, is both reducing overall injury severity, but also radically altering the pattern of injuries. There is a need to understand what this change is, what the injury mechanisms are, what are the costs associated with this, and what could be done to mitigate these injuries. In addition there is a need to monitor the effect of FMVSS 208 and 214 which regulate frontal and side protection.

In order to determine priorities and issues in Crashworthiness research, data must be collected about types of crashes and the resulting injuries that occur on the highways of the United States. Other organizations within R&D collect and analyze such statistics. Among these data collection activities are the programs within the National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA) such as the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS), the General Estimates System (GES), and the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), and approximately 12 years worth of data from 26 states on crashes. CIREN is acquiring a wealth of more detailed injury data in conjunction with crash investigations using Level 1 trauma centers at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark, the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC, the William Lehman Injury Research Center in Miami, Florida, the National Study Center for Trauma and EMS/ R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, Maryland, Harborview Injury Prevention & Research Center in Seattle, Washington, the San Diego County Trauma System in San Diego, California, the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the University of Alabama at Birmingham in Birmingham, Alabama, and the Inova Regional Trauma Center at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia.

Read more from the NHTSA article Injury Causes and Costs of High Speed Car Crashes