Occupant accelerations and injury potential during an ambulance-to-curb impact

This paper presents real world acceleration data for an ambulance driving up and over a curb. A full scale reenactment was performed for a litigated case in which a patient on a gurney in an ambulance claimed a variety of bodily injuries after the ambulance struck a curb. A height and weight matched surrogate rode on the gurney during the tests. Results demonstrated that peak vehicle and occupant accelerations never exceeded 1.1 g’s. To address the claimed injuries, the accelerations likely sustained by the patient were compared to those experienced during daily life. Since ambulances are wide vehicles that travel fast on potentially narrow arterial, collector or local roadways, curb or median impacts may occur during the normal course of driving. Thus, these results may be useful for forensic experts in dealing with similar cases involving claimed injuries following curb impacts.