| Autoliv has developed two airbags
to mitigate the effects of SUVs hitting pedestrians and passenger cars.
Their higher, boxier front ends are more likely to cause serious injuries.
EU pedestrian impact legislation could become more stringent by 2012.
Solutions such as pop-up bonnets aren’t suited to SUVs. And growing
sales of the vehicles exacerbates the problem of height incompatibility
between vehicles involved in side impacts.
“The fatality risk for pedestrians is 2.5 times higher in SUV impacts
than it is for regular cars,” said Autoliv. “In side impact
collisions, the front of an SUV typically hits above the sill and the
energy-absorbing structure of passenger cars, resulting in critical intrusions
into the passenger compartment. Crash data indicates that the risk of
death in such crashes is between 27 and 48 times higher in a passenger
car than in another SUV.”
Most pedestrian injuries caused by SUVs occur when the leading edge of
the bonnet strikes the chest/abdomen. Autoliv’s front edge airbag
reduced the risk of injuries there from 99 per cent to 3 per cent during
testing at 40km/h.
The firm says the airbag, triggered by pre-crash sensors, could be packaged
between the bumper and the grille. The inflated volume is around 100 litres
– less than a passenger airbag. The airbag runs along the entire
length of the bonnet.
Autoliv pedestrian protection projects leader Rikard Fredriksson said:
“The main challenge was making the airbag thin but still able to
protect – a bigger airbag would be very expensive.”
The bumper airbag, also triggered by pre-crash sensors, benefits pedestrians
but is designed primarily to protect passenger car occupants during side
impacts from SUVs.
The airbag reduced passenger compartment intrusion by 40 per cent during
testing at 48km/h. The firm says the tests also indicated that the car’s
side airbags have more time to inflate.
Fredriksson said: “Europe and Japan are the hot markets for pedestrian
protection but North America has more SUVs - they’re really taking
notice.”
The firm doesn’t have a start of production date yet but said that
it would be after 2012. Its pop-up bonnet device entered production in
2006 on the Jaguar XK, five years after being shown for the first time. |
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