Abstract:
Accidents that result in car body damage, although infrequent, carry the risk of occupant casualty. Such accidents continue to occur on commuter and intercity rail, heavy rail, and light rail operations (i.e., recently in Los Angeles, California and Boston, Massachusetts). Also, light rail operations in street traffic have resulted in casualties to occupants of automobiles, as detailed later in this paper. Car body structural design regulations have been developed by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) for commuter and intercity vehicles. The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) has supplemented these regulations with standards for pertinent aspects of car body and interior design. Therefore, it was decided that it would be worthwhile to develop similar standards for heavy and light rail vehicles (LRVs), with leading end design for mitigation of automobile occupant casualties in collisions with LRVs included in the light rail car body standard.
