New Technology Improves Vehicle Crash Tests

For decades automakers have researched crash safety with controlled experiments. And the use of seat belts, airbags, and roll cages have all dramatically improved occupant safety. Until now,
real world crashes were too unpredictable and therefore difficult to gather accurate information from. Safety researchers trying to reconstruct injuries in a crash have had to rely on engineering estimates of collision velocities and vehicles motions, before, during and after the collision to make dynamic assessments. But now, improved vehicle technology is making it possible to study actual crashes.

A new partnership between The University of Michigan Medical School and OnStar is working to collect crash and injury information from specific vehicle crashes. Acting as an eyewitness, OnStar’s Advanced Automatic Crash Notification transmits the crash severity, number of airbags deployed and location of the vehicle to an adviser, who passes that information along to first responders. With the permission of the owners and occupants the medical information, histories and x-rays are gathered and combined with the vehicle information to get a greater understanding of why injuries occur. This new research tool has the potential to improve emergency medical response techniques and improve vehicle safety.

Produced for General Motors