The tolerance of the human body to automobile collision impact - a systematic review of injury biomechanics research, 1990-2009.

Road traffic injuries account for 1.3 million deaths per year world-wide. Mitigating both fatalities and injuries requires a detailed understanding of the tolerance of the human body to external load. To identify research priorities, it is necessary to periodically compare trends in injury tolerance research to the characteristics of injuries occurring in the field. This study sought to perform a systematic review on the last twenty years of experimental injury tolerance research, and to evaluate those results relative to available epidemiologic data. Four hundred and eight experimental injury tolerance studies from 1990–2009 were identified from a reference index of over 68,000 papers. Examined variables included the body regions, ages, and genders studied; and the experimental models used. Most (20%) of the publications studied injury to the spine. There has also been a substantial volume of biomechanical research focused on upper and lower extremity injury, thoracic injury, and injury to the elderly – although these injury types still occur with regularity in the field. In contrast, information on pediatric injury and physiological injury (especially in the central nervous system) remains lacking. Given their frequency of injury in the field, future efforts should also include improving our understanding of tolerances and protection of vulnerable road users (e.g., motorcyclists, pedestrians).This work was supported in part by a Whitaker International Scholars Grant for post-doctoral biomedical engineering research. This work was also supported in part by internal funds from the European Center for Injury Prevention at the Universidad de Navarra, the University of Virginia Center for Applied Biomechanics, and the French Institute of Sciences and Technology for J.L. Forman et al. / Accident Analysis and Prevention 80 (2015) 7–17 15 Transport, Development and Networks. The injury biomechanics literature index used in this study was developed, and is maintained, by the University of Virginia Center for Applied Biomechanics