Webinar: Designing for Diversity? Challenges in Automobile Occupant Protection for a Diverse Population
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
10:00 – 11:00 am CT
The modern automobile is one of the most complex examples of human-machine interaction in existence. The driver and vehicle are in a constant ballet of control, action, and feedback between themselves, as well as with other drivers and vehicles on the road. Hidden beneath the familiar surface of controls and performance lies another engineering marvel critical to the vehicle-to-occupant interaction – namely, the safety systems designed to protect the occupant in the event of a crash. Nearly every component of the vehicle structure and interior are designed with consideration for the potential impact on occupant protection. The vehicle body has crumple zones to soften the blow of the collision, but is strong enough to keep the occupant compartment intact. The dashboard is close enough provide support to the occupant early in a collision, but also contains energy-absorbing structures to limit forces applied to the body. Seatbelts and airbags are tuned and positioned to control the motion of the body and to safely decelerate it while avoiding contact with hard structures. For a variety of practical and historical reasons, however, the delicate design of the driver protection system tends to be driven by evaluation tools and procedures targeting protection for mid-sized, middle aged, adult males.
In this hour we’ll explore some of the contemporary challenges for designing automobile safety systems for the entirety of the population, including some of the potential adverse consequences arising from the traditional narrow-cast approach. We’ll explore how increasing fragility and frailty changes injury protection priorities in older occupants. We’ll examine how obesity can affect how we interact with restraint systems, highlighting the challenges posed to restraint system design. We’ll discuss how the field has approached injury prevention for female automobile occupants in the face of male-dominated data and tools. Finally, we’ll touch on how these challenges may be affected by trends towards increasing vehicle automation.
This webinar is available to AAAM Members (all member types) at no cost. There is a charge of $50 (USD) for non-members. Pre-registration is required.
Instructors:
Jason Forman, Ph.D. – Center for Applied Biomechanics (UVA) | Dr. Forman is a Principal Scientist in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of the University of Virginia, and is a principal investigator at the UVA Center for Applied Biomechanics. Dr. Forman received his B.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Virginia in 2003 and 2009, respectively. Dr. Forman then served as the Sub-Director for Science for the European Center for Injury Prevention at the University of Navarra (Pamplona, Spain) before rejoining UVA in 2012. Dr. Forman is a Whitaker International Scholar for Biomedical Engineering Research, and has received awards from the International Society for Biomechanics and the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine. His research interest include injury biomechanics, automobile occupant protection systems, injury prediction modeling, and the effects of aging and body habitus on injury susceptibility and long-term outcomes.
Carolyn Roberts is a Ph.D. candidate at the Center for Applied Biomechanics in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Virginia. Before beginning her graduate studies, Carolyn graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and did research at NASA Langley Research Center. At the Center for Applied Biomechanics, she has worked in the fields of vehicle crashworthiness, rollover crashes, cervical spine injury, military underbody blast loading, and ankle injuries in automotive environments. Her current research focuses on sex differences in biomechanical response and injury, specifically how differences in bony geometry, material properties, and joint kinematics affect different rates and types of injury between males and females.
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