June 2009
Transport Canada Team Meeting
Transport Canada's Defect Investigation and Motor Vehicle Collision Investigation annual team meeting was held in Saskatoon, SK. Collision Analysis was well represented, as Marshal Paulo, Craig Good, Mike Ellis, Lonnie Unger, and Steven Thannhauser were all able to attend this year. The meeting included many interesting presentations from investigation teams around the country.
Lonnie and Steve went on to attend the Canadian Multidisciplinary Road Safety Conference XIX.
June 2009
On-Scene
The latest issue of our newsletter On-Scene will be available this month.
The utility terrain vehicle (UTV) is the latest toy for off-road lovers, and it's going through some safety-related growing pains. Hundreds of lawsuits have been launched against Yamaha for its version of the UTV, the Rhino. Our feature article takes a look at the history of the UTV and its alleged safety problems.
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May 2009
Seatbelt Usage in the United States
Learn about NHTSA's National Enforcement Mobilization Campaign.
Seat belts save lives! A Traffic Safety Facts Research Note published by the National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA), an office of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), provides a summary of seat belt usage rates in the United States:
Seat belts saved an estimated 15,147 lives in 2007, when the National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS) national belt use estimate was 82 percent.
The publication examines the potential benefit if seat belt use rose to at least 90 percent in all states:
An estimated 1,652 additional lives would have been saved had this increase in seat belt use occurred [in 2007], and nearly 40,000 more nonfatal injuries would have been prevented, resulting in additional cost savings of about $5.2 billion dollars.
California ranked fourth for seat belt usage in 2007 with 94.6 percent. Read the publication and find out how your state rates in seat belt usage.
Publication Link: DOT HS 811 140 (pdf)
April 2009
Congratulations Craig!
A paper Dr. Craig Good co-authored with Dr. David Viano and Dr. Janet Ronsky has been judged to be among the most outstanding SAE Technical Papers of 2008 and has been published in the first volume of the SAE International Journal of Passenger Cars-Mechanical Systems.
The citation is "The Hybrid III Dummy Family Subject to Loading by a Motorized Shoulder Belt Tensioner" SAE Int. J. Passeng. Cars - Mech.Syst. 1(1): 383-395, 2008.
Craig presented this paper at the SAE 2008 World Congress and it was originally published in the SAE publication Biomechanics. The reference is Good C, Viano D, Ronsky J. "The Hybrid III Dummy Family Subject to Loading by a Motorized Shoulder Belt Tensioner", Biomechanics, 2008 (SP-2163), Society of Automotive Engineers, Warrendale, PA. SAE 2008-01-0516.