Side impact test procedure for child restraint systems review of existing methods and proposals for continuation

Although accident analysis shows that lateral impact accidents continue to be dangerous for children in cars, no procedure to test side impact performance of child restraint systems (CRS) has been agreed on yet in Europe. In this paper, the existing four side impact test methods of ISO/TRL, ADAC, TUB and TNO are compared against full-scale MDB tests according to ECE R95 and EuroNCAP with respect to impact input and dummy readings. It is necessary that the finally agreed test procedure will be able to cope with today's and future CRS, especially with ISOFIX and CRS which offer the possibility to pretension the car belt