Crashworthiness of Low Speed Vehicles

The Crashworthiness of Low Speed Vehicles is to
be determined using a custom built crash testing apparatus.
The safety of golf carts is often overlooked because they are considered “low risk” vehicles. The
danger of these vehicles lies in the fact that they
aren’t mandated to have safety features outside of
seatbelts. A test rig that sufficiently tested how these
vehicles react under extreme conditions as well as
the risk to the occupants was designed and operated
through several iterations. The main components
of the rig was be a motorized variable speed pulley
system, concrete barrier, and a simple quick release
mechanism to detach the cart, and crash dummies
with sensors to record the experienced acceleration/
deceleration and gyration. The main parameters
that were studied in relation to crashworthiness are
structural performance, injury measures and dummy
movement. It was the goal of the experimenters
to show just how important it is to design LSVs with
higher safety standards.