SLIDE 1: Observations from US NCAP's Out of Position Side Air Bag Testing Lauren Beauchamp ACE Systems Technologies, Inc. SLIDE 2: Overview of SAB OOP in NCAP * Background * Manufacturer Submissions & Test Selection Process * Test Matrices Manufacturer Data & Testing Observations * MY 2005 Testing Plans COMMENTS: I’ll begin this with a short overview of what I am going to present. I will briefly touch on the program’s background and the subsequent procedures behind it followed by an overview of NCAP’s processes for the submission of manufacturer data and the selection of vehicles for testing. After this I will present the test matrices for MY 2003 and 2004, followed by observations from the tests and NCAP’s future plans. SLIDE 3: Background SLIDE 4: Side Airbag (SAB) Out-of-Position (OOP) Technical Working Group (TWG) * Encouraged by NHTSA Administrator in 1999 * Joint project of - Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers - Association of International Automobile Manufacturers (AIAM) - Automotive Occupant Restraints Council (AORC) - Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) COMMENTS: In the late 90s, concerns about the aggressiveness of side airbags grew as the increasing number of side impact airbags being installed in the vehicle fleet did. In 1999, at the suggestion of former NHTSA administrator Martinez, a side impact airbag out-of position technical working group formed to broach these concerns. Some members of this group included the Alliance, AIAM, AORC, and IIHS. SLIDE 5: TWG Procedures - Created occupant positions to assess injury risks * Used both child dummies, and small female side impact dummy - During development, NHTSA conducted research using these procedures * Capable of discriminating between SAB systems COMMENTS: The TWG, as I will refer to them, developed an extensive set of procedures using child and small female dummies in a variety of configurations intended to simulate out of position situations. NHTSA has conducted research using these procedures and has determined that they are able to discern between different SAB systems. SLIDES 6-7 Why SAB OOP Under NCAP? * Provide consumers with more information about vehicle SABs * Especially for children Website & Buying a Safer Car * Consumers made aware which vehicles meet TWG test positions COMMENTS: How exactly does Side Airbag Out of Position testing fit into NCAP? We feel this is good information to assist in consumer vehicle purchases, and given the fact that many of the procedures center around children the information is extremely important . In order to convey this information to the public, NCAP has been requesting data from manufacturers for NHTSA’s website and brochure. Vehicles that meet the TWG’s injury criteria are granted an “M” in both of these places, indicating that they have met the requirements. SAB OOP Under NCAP (cont’d.) - Verify some manufacturer responses via a “spot check” - Previously crashed vehicle selection * Tested under NCAP that model year (MY) * Frontal vehicles * Non-struck side of side impact vehicles - Standard SABs * Attempt to gain experience with a wide variety of SAB types - “M” vehicles chosen when possible COMMENTS: In addition to collecting this data, NCAP wanted to verify some of these manufacturer responses using actual vehicles. A natural fit for this type of testing is to use undeployed SABs from vehicles crashed during normal NCAP testing. Only vehicles with standard side airbags are used since NCAP tests with the minimal level of safety equipment available to the consumer, and every effort was made to chose vehicles that had received an “M” in order to have corresponding manufacturer data. SLIDE 8: Manufacturer Submissions & Test Selection Process SLIDE 9: Program Development 2003 - NCAP requests manufacturer data * Inconsistent information received * No mention of TWG in BSC or website 2004 - Present - Standard format - Vehicles that meet IARV’s for all TWG tests receive an “M” on website & in BSC brochure COMMENTS: In 2003, the agency attempted to collect its first year of data from manufacturers; no standard submission format made it very difficult to compare results with the accepted IARVs and even more difficult to give vehicles credit for meeting the requirements. In 2004, however, NCAP developed a standard submission format, which streamlined the process and allowed us to begin reporting “M”s with that MY. As I said previously, the actual data still remains confidential and only vehicles that “meet” are reported. Vehicles that either do not have data submitted or submit incomplete data are simply left blank. SLIDE 10: Testing Matrix - Only child dummies used * HIII-3YO produces highest injury values * HIII-6YO used with curtain SABs - Airbags only fired once * Re-install difficult & expensive * No multiple tests in vehicle COMMENTS: Because of the timing of our first round of testing, we did end up testing both 2003 and 2004 MY vehicles concurrently. To develop the matrix, we followed many of the recommendations already set forth by the TWG. Only child dummies were used during our testing, and we attempted to use the Hybrid-III3YO whenever possible since this dummy has shown in previous NHTSA testing to produce the highest injury numbers, especially when certain positions are selected. Since the small female SID-IIs was unavailable for testing, the HIII-6YO was used with every curtain airbag. The driver’s position was unused save for one test since children are not intended to be seated in that position. Every airbag was fired only once, as re-install is both difficult and expensive, especially when you are dealing with a large variety of vehicle manufacturers. SLIDE 11 : SAB OOP Test Matrices SLIDE 12 : Testing by Mount & Dummy