Question Why are side impact crashes safer RF?

mlohry · Dec 6, 2012

DH and I were watching crash test videos of seats and I was explaining that it's better for a child to be RF in a side impact collision too, but he wants to know why and I'm not sure. He's an engineer, so of course he wants the technical reason

My guess would be because the child is more cradled in the seat RF, am I right?

morninglori · Dec 6, 2012

Yes, you are right... they end up more cradled due to the fact that in a side impact (y-direction), the vehicle is usually in motion (+x-direction), and the forces acting in the +x-direction keeps the RF child in cradled (coupled closely) to the carseat.

Converted to engineese- hope it helps

joolsplus3 · Dec 6, 2012

Was he asking because the crash tests seem to show heads hitting doors as much as FF crash tests? I was going to just yank up an obvious video, but the first one I found showed a head whacking the side barrier/'car door' in a Scenera. Of course, most side impacts also have an element of forward motion, which many sled crash tests don't show, I guess it would be 'duh' obvious if crash tests were more real-world like? (Think: driving through an intersection and getting T-boned, then the seat would dip down, keeping the body obviously more contained).
Here's the channel with the crash tests I'm referring to... http://www.youtube.com/user/ikea55?feature=watch

mlohry · Dec 6, 2012

Yep those are the ones we were watching. We were watching them debating about if a Radian without head wings would be ok to continue to RF our 3.9 year old daughter. I wasn't impressed with how the Radian without head wings performed FF, but we are buying it to help keep our DD RF. If it's used FF we will have it in only vehicles with side air bags or used in the middle.

Question Why are side impact crashes safer RF?

mlohry

New member

morninglori

New member

joolsplus3

Admin - CPS Technician

mlohry

New member

Car-Seat.Org Facebook Group

Sponsors

Forum statistics