Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN)
In 2005, the Center was awarded a five-year contract from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to serve as the only site primarily focused on pediatric occupants in the Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN) 
.
CIREN is a multidisciplinary research affiliation of clinicians and engineers in academia, industry and government, whose mission is to improve the prevention, treatment and rehabilitation of motor-vehicle crash injuries with the goal of reducing deaths, disabilities and human and economic costs through the study of real-world cases of serious injuries sustained in car crashes. Pooling data from eight network trauma centers nationwide, CIREN provides a rich database for analysis, forming the basis for potentially life-changing tools and technologies.
The Science of Crash Investigation
Motor-vehicle crashes are a leading cause of injury-related admissions to The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and are the leading cause of death for children in the United States. These facts have motivated Children’s Hospital to form its own crash investigation unit within the Center for Injury Research and Prevention.
The crash investigation team collects detailed information from the field about crashes involving children and uses that information to inform improved engineering design and policy that will protect other children from injury in future crashes.
The Center’s crash investigation team is at the head of a pipeline of engineering-focused research, feeding results seen in the field back to their Center colleagues. Crash investigations help monitor how auto-safety technologies affect outcomes for children in crashes, and inform improvements to federal safety standards and engineering design.
With more than 800 crash investigations completed, the Center’s researchers have extensive experience and a detailed database of real-world crashes involving child occupants.
Crash Investigators in Action
Study participants are identified and give consent through either the Partners for Child Passenger Safety study or our hospital’s level one pediatric trauma center, which accepts more than 75,000 visits each year.
A crash investigation involves the dispatch of team personnel to collect detailed information from the incident scene, the vehicles, the treating hospital and the family. Engineering analysis of this real-world data provides an understanding of how injuries are caused and forms the basis for innovations and recommendations to reduce the risk of injury to other children in similar situations.
A multidisciplinary team from across the Center and Children’s Hospital meets monthly to evaluate the crash data from many perspectives, in order to determine what causes or prevents pediatric injury in serious crashes.
Our Research
Data collected from our crash investigations often provide the real-world data needed by federal agencies like NHTSA to set quality standards and parameters for vehicle safety and child restraint technologies. For example, the Center’s CIREN research will help NHTSA to determine how to further regulate the use of LATCH to install child restraints in a vehicle’s rear seat.