Child Motor Vehicle Injuries in Wisconsin Communities: A Data-Driven Safety Testing Approach

Project Summary:

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Motor vehicle crashes remain a leading cause of serious injury and death among children in Wisconsin, with the greatest burden concentrated in high-risk urban and suburban communities. Despite major advances in child restraint systems and vehicle safety technologies, pediatric occupants continue to experience severe head and torso injuries, particularly in side-impact crashes. Critical gaps persist in understanding how community-level risk factors, crash dynamics, and restraint use contribute to these outcomes. This project will link statewide crash surveillance data with hospital trauma records to characterize the epidemiologic patterns of child motor vehicle injuries in Wisconsin. Analyses will identify high-incidence communities, evaluate restraint misuse and crash mode (frontal vs. side impact), and quantify injury severity distributions. Findings will guide a series of pilot laboratory experiments using pediatric anthropomorphic test devices (ATDs) to replicate representative crash conditions identified from the data. These controlled tests will measure translational and rotational head motions to examine biomechanical mechanisms underlying observed injury patterns. By integrating population-level data with experimental validation, the project will establish the first combined epidemiologic–biomechanical framework for pediatric crash injury in Wisconsin. Results will inform targeted community prevention strategies, refine child injury metrics relevant to regulatory testing (FMVSS 213), and lead to extramural funding from federal and car seat manufacture agencies. Through this integrated approach, the project advances AHW’s mission to promote health equity and build capacity for sustained, data-driven improvements in child safety statewide