Draft minutes of the 17th meeting of the IWG EqOP held on 14 October 2026. The IWG’s strategic objective is to achieve more equitable and robust occupant protection for a diverse population through inclusive regulations and protection strategies that reduce injury risk below a tolerable threshold for as many occupants as possible. The priorities endorsed by GRSP remain rear impact protection, frontal impact restraint systems, and the assessment of injury types that are currently insufficiently addressed, particularly brain, soft-tissue neck, and lower-extremity injuries. The Chairs reviewed progress of task forces and introduced the proposed theme of the Tokyo workshop: robustness assessment of occupant protection.

The informal working group on Equitable Occupant Protection reviewed the status of five task forces addressing rear-end impact, virtual crash testing, frontal impact and restraint systems, and assessment of currently not considered injury types with high frequency and risk of permanent medical impairment. The group discussed robustness assessment for occupant protection, defined as the vehicle’s ability to protect occupants with variation of body height, weight, shape, physical constitution, and age in real-world relevant collisions. An upcoming workshop in Tokyo will develop conceptual ideas for assessing robustness by evaluating performance over a matrix of human and crash-condition variability, complementing current requirement-specific assessments based on anthropomorphic test devices, with status reports due December 2026 and final report December 2027.

Agenda for the 17th meeting of the informal working group on Equitable Occupant Protection, EqOP, to be held on-line on 14 October 2026. The meeting will cover welcome, adoption of the agenda, approval of minutes from the 15th meeting, review of the IWG EqOP Progress Dashboard, status of task forces, upcoming meetings and workshops, and conclusion.