Reducing Heavy Truck Aggressiveness: Moving Heavy Truck into a 1993 Honda Civic 3-Door Hatchback at 80.4 KPH

Johnston, S. A. · 1993 · ROSA P / United States. Department of Transportation. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

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Summary

This report documents a crash test conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to support research on reducing heavy truck aggressiveness. The study, performed on June 14, 1993, at the Transportation Research Center Inc., involved impacting a stationary 1993 Honda Civic 3-door hatchback with a moving heavy truck. The objective was to evaluate vehicle crush and occupant response metrics in a high-severity collision scenario. The experimental design utilized a 1993 Honda Civic (test weight 1,121 kg) as the stationary target vehicle and a heavy truck (test weight 11,163 kg) as the impacting vehicle. The truck was equipped with a standard bumper extended 16 inches forward. The impact occurred at 80.4 kph (approximately 50 mph) at a 340-degree angle, engaging the left front of the car with the right front of the truck. The Civic was instrumented with eight accelerometers and contained an instrumented Hybrid III Part 572E driver dummy. The dummy was seated in the driver’s position, restrained by a 3-point unibelt and an airbag, and equipped with sensors measuring head, chest, pelvis, femur, and neck loads. Data was recorded at 8,000 samples per second, and the event was captured by one real-time and five high-speed motion picture cameras. The results indicated significant vehicle deformation, with a maximum static crush of 466 mm. The truck bumper face was badly deformed. Occupant injury metrics recorded for the driver dummy included a Head Injury Criteria (HIC) value of 295 and a peak chest acceleration of 43.5 g. The dummy experienced substantial lower extremity loads, with a maximum left femur force of 7,950 N and a right femur force of 6,745 N. Kinematically, the dummy translated forward upon impact, with the airbag inflating to react against the head and upper torso. The dummy’s knees impacted the instrument panel, and the head contacted the driver’s side inner door panel before rebounding into the seat back. The vehicle’s windshield cracked entirely, and the driver’s side door glass broke. This report provides specific empirical data on the interaction between heavy trucks and light passenger vehicles, highlighting the severity of occupant loading and vehicle intrusion in such collisions. The findings contribute to the broader NHTSA initiative to understand and mitigate the aggressiveness of heavy trucks in mixed-traffic environments, offering baseline data for future safety standard development and vehicle design improvements.

Key finding

The instrumented driver dummy recorded a Head Injury Criteria of 295 and maximum femur forces of 7950 N (left) and 6745 N (right) during the 80.4 kph impact.

Methodology

lab_experiment

Sample size: 1

Provenance

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Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

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