Vehicle safety today is evaluated on the basis of standardized crash tests. The goal is to classify the level of safety using tests which can be reproduced and repeated at any time. In laboratory tests, the evaluation of safety systems and their assessment for effectiveness commonly begins after the time of collision.
In a real accident situation, conditions could, however, be different. In accident situations, passenger car occupants are already exposed to lateral or longitudinal acceleration forces resulting from emergency braking or skidding. These accelerations lead to occupant displacements and thus to situations in which occupants are no longer in their initial positions when the collision occurs. This naturally affects the protective efficiency of the restraint systems. The development of modern systems to prevent accidents or reduce their severity will cause such situations to occur much more frequently in the future. Autonomous emergency braking systems accordingly reduce the impact energy on the one hand, but have a considerable influence on the occupants’ interaction with the vehicle on the other hand.
There are currently no tools available for determining the impact of a dynamic driving situation and of the resulting change in a restraint system’s protective efficiency. Nor are there any comparisons available on the behavior of human beings, as opposed to crash test dummies, in the low g-phase immediately before a collision.
The objective of this paper is to find and evaluate a method for approximating the crash test for exemplary dynamic driving responses in the case of longitudinal traffic escalation. This paper thus begins by identifying, by means of selected examples, the problems faced when comparing real accidents and crash methodology.
In studies on the behavior of real vehicle occupants and crash test dummies in dynamic driving situations, movements are analyzed and differences described. The behavior of the dummies tested in such dynamic driving situations is analyzed with regard to shortcomings and potential points of action. To assess points of action for their efficiency, specifically performed crash tests including previous dynamic driving brake responses are discussed and evaluated. A concluding assessment of the behavior of both the occupant and the dummy aims to determine the suitability of crash measurement data for evaluating the overall situation.