Compatibility Assessment Proposal Close From Real Life Accident 2003-06-0014

Accident studies show that incompatibility has become the main cause of fatal injury in car-to-car accidents. There is a general agreement today that improving compatibility is one of the most effective ways to reduce the number of road accident victims.

Therefore, structural car design must take into account other road users without decreasing self-protection level supplied by all new passenger cars. In addition to these safety considerations, the front unit structural design has to account for an increasing number of constraints: improvement of real-world performance in safety, fulfill current and future regulations like "CAFÉ" or pedestrian, reducing utilization costs and so on.

Furthermore, European fleet is changing in mass and in size, as the world's ones, and new fashion vehicles appear different than the previous one.

This paper deals with the development of a more comprehensive approach in order to better take into account safety requirements coming from real-life accidents and the work done over the past years on understanding the physic of compatibility. The aim of this paper is to propose a better assessment procedure and a new test methodology in a standard approach for improving compatibility.