Citation

Kuehn M, Froeming R, Schindler V. Proc. Int. Tech. Conf. Enhanced Safety Vehicles 2005; 2005: 9p.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, In public domain, Publisher National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Against the background of upcoming intelligent safety systems, which also will have an impact on passive safety in general and on pedestrian safety in particular, all relevant technical measures have to be quantified in a combined way in order to find the most effective solutions. The article deals with the introduction of an assessment procedure called “Vehicle Related Pedestrian Safety - index” (VERPS-index). This test procedure is exemplarily applied to two very different cars. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the uplifting hood applied to the front of these two sample cars is quantified. This approach consists of four modules: accident analysis, numerical simulation of kinematic impact parameters, component tests, and quantification of pedestrian safety. Current European component tests use impact parameters which are set more or less independent of the vehicle shape. The authors propose to use numerical simulations in order to generate vehicle shape dependent test parameters. A weighting procedure based on accident statistics is applied to evaluate the relevance of each tested point on the front of the vehicle regarding its actual impact probability in real life. Thus, the VERPS-index is able to solve many of the disadvantages of a conventional component test compared to a full-scale test. Based on the VERPS-index the authors are able to show in detail how the pedestrian safety performance depends on the vehicle front shape and how it differs for adults and children. Technical measures like an uplifting hood can clearly improve the safety performance. However, their effectiveness strongly depends on the individual vehicle’s front geometry and differs for adults and children.