THE EFFECTIVENESS OF HEAD RESTRAINTS: AN ANALYSIS OF TEXAS DATA

The primary objective of the report was to determine the injury reducing effectiveness of head restraints in rear impact collisions. Three categories of injuries were analyzed from records on the 1972 Texas accident data set. Multi-dimensional contingency table analysis was used to control for the confounding effects of four variables (vehicle damage severity, driver age, driver sex, and vehicle size). In addition, side impact collisions served as a control group to remove any biases in the raw data. The study found significant effectiveness rates in all three categories of injuries after controlling for the presence of confounding effects.

• Corporate Authors:

  Opportunity Systems, Incorporated

  1406 L Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20036

  National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Authors:
  • Best, C
  • Whittier, D
  • VanMeter, J
• Publication Date: 1981-5

Media Info

• Pagination: 43 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Age; Crash injury research; Crash investigation; Crashes; Deployable head restraints; Drivers; Gender; Headrests; Injuries; Injury severity; Measures of effectiveness; Rear end crashes; Reduction (Chemistry); Research; Safety equipment; Side crashes
• Uncontrolled Terms: Driver age; Effectiveness; Severity
• Old TRIS Terms: Reduction
• Subject Areas: Highways; Research; Safety and Human Factors; Society; Vehicles and Equipment; I84: Personal Injuries; I91: Vehicle Design and Safety;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00343579
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: National Technical Information Service
• Report/Paper Numbers: DOT-HS-805-907 Final Rpt.
• Contract Numbers: DTNH-22-80-C-06017
• Files: NTIS, TRIS, USDOT
• Created Date: Oct 28 1982 12:00AM