CASE STUDY OF VEHICLE MANEUVERS LEADING TO ROLLOVERS: NEED FOR A VEHICLE TEST SIMULATING OFF-ROAD EXCURSIONS, RECOVERY AND HANDLING. IN: OCCUPANT AND VEHICLE RESPONSES IN ROLLOVERS

Rollover crashes are an important issue in automobile safety. Currently, the safety community is not only working on advancing injury countermeasures but is also investigating technologies to help avoid rollover crashes. This chapter on a vehicle test that simulates real-world conditions is from a comprehensive textbook on occupant and vehicle responses in rollovers. The authors note that the evaluation of rollovers typically involves vehicle-handling tests that are conducted on flat road surfaces with a uniform or split coefficient of friction. They stress that it is crucial to determine the precipitating events leading to rollovers by analyzing real-world rollover crashes. The authors determined the sequence of events leading to rollovers in 63 investigated cases. The cases were divided into 3 categories defining the precipitating event leading to a rollover: negotiating a curve at usually too high a speed (47%), drifting off the road (27%), and avoiding an obstacle in the traveling lane (25%). This study prioritizes the need to carry out tests that simulate a vehicle leaving the road and having at least two wheels on the shoulder after any of these three precipitating events (90 percent of the 63 cases involved the vehicle leaving the roadway with at least 2 wheels). The authors conclude that handling tests need to include a transition from a road surface to the shoulder where there may be a drop off of approximately 50 mm and an attempt to recover back onto the road with various degrees of steering and braking.