National Highway Traffic Safety Administration August 23, 2013 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This notice announces the Twenty First Public Meeting of members of the Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network. CIREN is a collaborative effort to conduct research on crashes and injuries at six Level I Trauma Centers across the United States linked by a computer network. The current CIREN model utilizes two types of centers, medical and engineering. Medical centers are based at Level I Trauma Centers that admit large numbers of people injured in motor vehicle crashes. These teams are led by trauma surgeons and emergency physicians and also include a crash investigator and project coordinator. Engineering centers are based at academic engineering laboratories that have experience in motor vehicle crash and human injury research. Engineering teams partner with trauma centers to enroll crash victims into the CIREN program. Engineering teams are led by mechanical engineers, typically trained in the area of impact biomechanics. Engineering teams also include trauma/emergency physicians, a crash investigator, and a project coordinator. Either type of team typically includes additional physicians and/or engineers, epidemiologists, nurses, and other researchers.The CIREN process combines prospective data collection with professional multidisciplinary analysis of medical and engineering evidence to determine injury causation in every crash investigation conducted. Researchers can review data and share expertise, which may lead to a better understanding of crash injury mechanisms and the design of safer vehicles.The six centers will give presentations on current research based on CIREN data. Topics include: Understanding Brain Injury Mechanisms: Integrating Real World Lesions, Anthropomorphic Test Device Response, and Finite Element Modeling; Evaluating the Benefits for Advanced Automatic Crash Notification; Vehicle Seat Bottom Influence on Spine Loads in Frontal Impacts; Rib Fractures in Older Occupants; Changes Over Time in Injury and Crash Characteristics; and Determination of Seat Belt Use and Positioning with Three-Dimensional CT Scans. The final agenda will be posted to the CIREN Web site that can be accessed by going to https://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/ciren. The agenda will be posted one week prior to the meeting. Date and Time: The meeting is scheduled from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 4, 2013.