Proposed Project for the MSU Industrial Math Students

Crash-Relevant Vehicle Parameters beyond Mass and Footprint

Background:

A dataset of fatal crashes in the US during 2002-2008 involving 2000-2007 Model Year vehicles has been made available by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). It has been used by the NHTSA and Chrysler to study the relationship between crash fatality risk of the occupants and vehicle mass and its footprint through regression studies.

It is of interest to expand the regression to include other vehicle parameters, which are not included in the above dataset. It is hypothesized that the New Car Assessment Program crash tests provide such additional parameters.

Project:

1. To obtain crash test response time histories characteristics from the NHTSA NCAP crash test database for vehicles in the Fatality Dataset
   
2. To explore through regression, or other methods, any potential correlation, relationships or causal description based on foundational physics between field fatality risk and these characteristics
   

Planned Steps and Anticipated Analytical Methodologies/Tools:

1. Identify the set of vehicles that are members of both the Fatality Dataset, and NHTSA NCAP Crash Tests database; Establish Crash Dataset
   
2. Crush characteristics formulation and extraction from downloaded data
   
3. Exploratory regression analysis
   

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