Publications by authors named "Benjamin K Shurtz"
Objective: In 2020, 17% of all crash fatalities were individuals aged 65 years or older. Crash data also revealed that for older occupants, thoracic related injuries are among the leading causes of fatality. Historically, the majority of near-side impact postmortem human subjects (PMHS) studies used a generic load wall to capture external loads that were applied to PMHS.
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- Previous research suggests that seatbelts alone may not be sufficient during far-side impacts, prompting the need for additional safety measures.
- This study tested a new airbag designed specifically for far-side impacts to see how well it protects occupants compared to tests without it.
- Results showed that while the airbag reduced injury severity in test subjects, the WorldSID (a crash test dummy) struggled to accurately reflect certain injury risks, indicating limitations in its evaluation capabilities for new safety tech.
Far-side kinematics and injury are influenced by the occupant environment. The goal of the present study was to evaluate in-vehicle human far-side kinematics, kinetics and injury and to assess the ability of the WorldSID to represent them. A series of tests with five Post-Mortem Human Subjects and the WorldSID were conducted in a vehicle-based sled test environment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe purpose of this study was to examine the effects of chestbands on both global and local thoracic response. A total of twenty-two frontal impacts were imposed on two post-mortem human surrogates, using a 23 kg pneumatic impactor. Impacts were at speeds of 0.
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