A laboratory evaluation of a low cost motor vehicle crash recorder

The need for a low cost vehicle crash recorder that would provide a measure of crash severity for a large number of vehicle crashes has long been recognized. A simple viscous damped mechanical crash recorder has been developed which measures vehicle velocity change, ΔV, as the recorded parameter. Prototypes have been evaluated in a laboratory test program which subjected the recorders to a series of tests under various crash speeds and durations that might be expected in the real world. The results of this evaluation indicate that the prototype, low cost crash recorders have great potential for large scale application in motor vehicles.