Relative Safety Assessment for Positioning Children in Vehicles with Varying Levels of Advanced Safety Technologies

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that advances in rear seat occupant protection are trailing while frontal crash prevention technologies have disproportionately improved front seat occupant safety. Therefore, the first objective of this study is to identify the safest seat for children by estimating injury severity by seat position using current crash data. The second objective of this study is to demonstrate that Level-2 and above (i.e., L2+) AVs will be significantly different from current vehicles regarding child injury severity, and therefore it is essential to find the safest seat for children in L2+ AVs. This study utilized data from the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) to estimate crash injury severity by seat position in children. This study used the Injury Severity Score (ISS) as its measure of crash severity. The mean ISS for restrained children sitting in the front passenger seat was 0.494 (for model year > 2000 vehicles). The mean ISSs for second-row left and second-row right seats were 0.374 and 0.322, respectively. The second-row middle seat had 162, 98, and 71% lower mean ISSs than the front passenger, second-row left, and second-row right seats, respectively. Overall, in both restrained and unrestrained scenarios, the safest seat for a child was the second-row middle seat.