Motor vehicle accidents are statistically the major cause of accidental severe injuries for pregnant women and fetuses fatality. Volunteers, post mortem human surrogates, anthropomorphic crash test devices and computational occupant models are used to improve human safety in motor vehicle accidents. However, due to the ethical issues, pregnant women and their fetuses cannot be used as volunteers or post mortem human surrogates to investigate the effects of crashes on them. The only anthropomorphic test device representing pregnant women is very limited in design and lacks a fetus. There is no computational pregnant occupant model with a fetus other than 'Expecting'. This thesis focuses on understanding the risk of placental abruption for pregnant drivers involved in road accidents, hence assessing the risk to fetus fatality. An extensive review of existing models in general and pregnant women models in particular is reported. The time line of successive development of crash test dummies and their positive effect on automotive passive safety design are examined. 'Expecting', the computational pregnant occupant model with a finite element uterus and a multibody fetus, is used in this research to determine the strain levels in the uteroplacental interface. External factors, such as the effect of restraint systems and crash speeds are considered. Internal factors, such as the effect of placental location in the uterus, and the inclusion and exclusion of a fetus are investigated. The head of the multibody fetus is replaced with a deformable head model to investigate the effects of a deformable fetus head on strain levels. The computational pregnant driver model with a fetus offers a more realistic representation of the response to crash impact hence provides a useful tool to investigate fetus safety in motor vehicle accidents. Seat belt, airbag and steering wheel interact directly with the pregnant abdomen and play an important role on fetus safety in motor vehicle accidents. The results prove that the use of a three-point seat belt with the airbag offer the greatest protection to the fetus for frontal crash impacts. The model without a fetus underestimates the strain levels. The outcome of this research should assist automobile manufacturers to address the potential safety issues at the design level.

No description available.

The "Actively Caring for KIDS Process," a multi-component program that taught retail store sales associates to act as behavior-change agents for child passenger safety, was implemented at a nationwide-chain discount store and evaluated with an interrupted time series design and a similar control site for comparison. Key components of the KIDS Process included a) training of sales associates to act as behavior-change agents at the point-of-purchase, b) the use of in-store awareness and supportive materials such as posters and sales associate buttons, and c) incentives for participation in checkpoints. Safety-seat checks (n = 31) were held in store parking lots, where caregivers' safety-seat installations (n = 241) were recorded as safe or at-risk for a variety of criteria and then the seats were reinstalled correctly. Research assistants posing as child caregivers visited the retail stores (n = 156) with the purported objective of obtaining information about selecting and installing a safety seat. Information given by sales associates was systematically recorded as safe or at-risk on a checklist. A 2 (Store) x 2 (Phase) ANOVA on sales associates' percent safe information scores revealed a significant interaction and no main effects. The Control store did not differ across the two phases, but scores at the intervention store were significantly higher after the intervention than during pre-intervention and when compared to the Control store during post-intervention. The training of sales associates resulted in an average 65% increase in percent safe scores. At the parking lot checks, 93 percent of seats checked were misused in one or more ways, with an average of four errors per seat. ANOVA and Chi-square analyses indicated that the intervention failed to have an impact on child safety-seat misuse observed or on the number of participants attending the checkpoints. This is likely a result of few parents attending the checkpoints who had talked to our trained associates. To target more parents, this intervention might be better placed at well-baby checkups. / Ph. D.

No description available.