Safety Engineering: How to Stop Drowning in Crash Data

Across the automotive industry, safety teams are generating more crash simulation data than ever before. Interpreting that data has become one of the most time-consuming and uncertain steps.

Engineers often spend days or even weeks analyzing data. We read signal curves, estimate load paths, and run new design iterations. We use our best engineering judgment to find the right parameter or parameters. We hope to bring the injury value below its threshold.  

The challenge is not running simulations. The challenge is turning simulation data into data-driven, confident engineering decisions. After that, the goal is to turn data into design improvements with minimal iterations.

INSIGHT CONNECT® solves these challenges. 

The automotive industry has embraced simulation to accelerate vehicle development. There are:

• New regulatory scenarios that focus on virtual testing (VT)
• New regulations that will multiply simulations (workload will increase by 2.5-3x in coming years)
• Evolving NCAP compliance protocols which are divergent in nature, and now expand to include Human Body Models (HBMs)
• HBMs that increase the number tests cases engineers must evaluate

This is good. It allows engineers to avoid failures during an expensive physical test.  

By the end of the decade, many safety programs may analyze several times more crash scenarios than they do today.  

CAE engineering teams are not expanding at the same rate. We're not ready to deal with the 5x increase in workloads driven by the VT requirements.

This imbalance has created a critical gap. Crash data analysis still depends too much on manual work.  

INSIGHT CONNECT® transforms how engineers interact with crash simulation results.

Instead of manually interpreting dozens of signal curves, the platform organizes crash data. Data points become a clear analytical workflow. CAE engineers get detailed insights to accelerate root cause analysis.

The system operates around four core principles.  

Standard post-processing extracts the regular channels required to compute injury criteria. These are the outputs engineers have always worked with. However, by definition, they are insufficient for root cause diagnosis.

INSIGHT CONNECT® Dummy Models resolve this by making non-standard outputs available deterministically. The diagnostic question shifts:

• From how bad the injury value is
• To why this force exists, at this magnitude, at this time, on this body region 

Engineers can see how loads propagate through different body regions during the crash event. Decompose force contributions by source over the crash time. This visualization transforms abstract signal data into intuitive insight. The interaction between restraint geometry and occupant kinematics is no longer inferred; it is computed.   

First, INSIGHT CONNECT® analyzes the force balance within the model. Then, it identifies which body regions contribute most to a specific injury response. Engineers can trace injury values back to their physical cause. You won't need trial-and-error analysis.

A decision dashboard highlights injury exceedances, identifies the source of force overload on the affected body region, suggests target force-reduction values, and helps engineers re-evaluate restraint system improvements using dashboard insights.

By structuring crash analysis around these steps, INSIGHT CONNECT® turns simulation output into actionable engineering intelligence.

Every crash simulation creates hundreds of standard signals that describe the motion and forces on occupant surrogates. Engineers must determine:

• Why an injury criterion exceeded its threshold?
• Which design parameters are responsible?
• What design change will correct the issue?
• Can we confidently suggest a countermeasure that will actually protect the occupant ATD?

Without non-standard outputs that reveal unknowns and offer deep insights and clear diagnostic tools, this process becomes iterative. Gut feelings and increased reliance from juniors on experts help drive engineers. The result is what many safety engineers describe as the "iteration trap".

Designing an optimized restraint system is rarely straightforward.  

Airbag timing, pretensioner timings, belt loads, seat stiffness, and occupant kinematics interact in complex ways. A small adjustment intended to improve one injury metric can worsen another. You may suddenly miss metric for a different NCAP protocol.  

Engineers rely on trial and error. Without clear insight into load paths, force transfer in the body, and the exact size of critical parts, you must keep iterating.

The process typically looks like this:

• A simulation estimates an injury exceedance
• Engineers analyze dozens of signals to determine the cause
• Design changes are implemented
• The simulation is rerun

If the problem persists, the cycle continues.  

Diagnosing the root cause of an NCAP exceedance using traditional methods can take up to two weeks.  

But schedule delays are only part of the problem. Without a first-principles force balance, even skilled engineers rely on patterns and past experience. That is structured guesswork, not computation.

This is not a failure of expertise. This is a structural limitation of the existing method. A single late-program NCAP physical test failure can cost $150,000 to $350,000 per test, plus delay launch schedules. 

If you improve your crash data interpretation, you get time and the decision-making edge.

Traditional crash simulation analysis often requires extensive manual investigation, and expert engineers reduce the margin of decision-making error. Engineers compare signal curves, study occupant motion, and test many design options. They do this to find the cause of an injury exceedance.

INSIGHT CONNECT® automates much of this diagnostic process.

Force vector visuals and body-region load analysis help engineers find the main cause of safety issues much faster. With dashboard intelligence, teams can reduce analysis time from weeks to hours in many cases.

Across a full vehicle development program, these time savings can translate into weeks or months recovered in engineering schedules.

As safety programs grow in complexity, another challenge is emerging. The industry faces a widening talent gap.  

Senior safety engineers often spend significant time mentoring junior engineers on how to interpret complex crash signals. At the same time, less experienced engineers may struggle to diagnose the underlying mechanisms behind injury metrics.  

INSIGHT CONNECT® helps bridge this expertise gap.  

The platform enables engineers at all experience levels to understand crash behavior more quickly. It does this by:

• Visualizing crash dynamics and
• Automating root cause diagnosing