At the 13th RSV-Conference in 1992, the EEVC-WG 10 subsystem test procedures for cars to assess protection for pedestrians were presented. In the meantime, more than 150 single tests were carried out using the head impactors developed by BASt. It showed that this test method is a reliable tool to determine the potential of harm of car front surfaces with respect to pedestrian head impact.
Bonnets of ten types of cars were tested with both the adult and the child head impactor. It showed that eight out of ten bonnets of the different cars were too stiff themselves to meet the test requirements with the child impactor. With the adult impactor, on the other hand, over 40% of the bonnet area tested, averaged over all cars, performed well and gave a HIC value below 1000. As a result, between the undersurface of the bonnet and stiff parts of substructure there should be a minimum distance of around 50 mm in the child area of impact and around 70 mm in the adult one.
The upper tubes of frequently used crash bars mounted to off-road vehicles are often inside the wrap around distances of 1000 mm to 1500 mm which is the child head impact area according to the EEVC-WG 10 test procedure. Therefore, four different types of crash bars were tested. The results of the child head impactor tests showed that HIC values can exceed the test criterion, even at impact speeds reduced to a half of the proposed speed of 40 km/h.