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A methodology to derive precision requirements for automatic emergency braking (AEB) test procedures
(2015)
AEB Systems are becoming important to increase traffic safety. Test procedures in testing for consumer information, manufacturer self-certification and technical regulations are used to ensure a certain minimum performance of these systems. Consequently, test robustness, test efficiency and finally test cost become increasingly important. The key driver for testing effort and test costs is the required repeatable accuracy in a test design - the higher the accuracy, the higher effort and test costs. On the other hand, the performance of active safety systems depends on time discretization in the environment perception and other sub-systems: for instance, typical sensors supply information with a cycle time of 50 - 150 ms. Time discretization results in an inherent spread of system performance, even if the test conditions are perfectly equal. The proposed paper shows a methodology to derive requirements for a test setup (e.g. test repeats, use of driving robots, ...) as function of AEB system generation and rating method (e.g. Euro NCAP points awarded, pass/fail, ...). While the methodology itself is applicable to AEB pedestrian and AEB Car-Car scenarios, due to the lack of sufficient test data for AEB Car-Car, the focus of this paper is on AEB pedestrian scenarios. A simulation model for the performance of AEB Pedestrian systems allows for the systematic variation of the discretization time as well as test condition accuracy. This model is calibrated with test results of 4 production vehicles for AEB Pedestrian, all fully tested by BASt according to current Euro NCAP test protocols. Selected parameters to observe the accuracy of the test setup in case of pedestrian AEB is the calculated impact position of pedestrian on the vehicle front (as if no braking would have occurred), and the test vehicle speed accuracy. These variable was shown in real tests to be repeatable in the range of ± 5 cm and ± 0,25 km/h, respectively, with a fully robotized state of the art test setup. The sensitivity of AEB performance (measured in achieved speed reduction as well as overall rating result according to current Euro NCAP rating methods) towards discretization and the sensitivity of performance towards test accuracy then is compared to identify economic yet robust test concepts. These comparisons show that the available repeatability accuracy of current test setups is more than sufficient for today's AEB system capabilities. Time discretization problems dominate the performance spread especially in test scenarios with a limited pedestrian dummy reveal time (e.g. child behind obstruction, running adult scenarios with low car speeds). This would allow to increase test tolerances to decrease test cost. A methodology which allows to derive the required tolerances in active safety tests might be valuable especially for NCAPs of emerging countries that do not have the necessary equipment (e.g. driving robots, positioning units) available for the full-scale and high tolerance EuroNCAP active safety procedures yet still want to rate active safety systems, thus improving the global safety.
Der Vorschlag, dass alle Kraftfahrzeuge auch am Tag mit Licht fahren sollen, wird seit vielen Jahren national und international diskutiert. Aufgrund dessen hat das Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Bau- und Wohnungswesen die Bundesanstalt für Straßenwesen beauftragt, die Auswirkungen des Fahrens mit Licht am Tag auf die Straßenverkehrssicherheit in Deutschland im Rahmen eines Forschungsprojektes genauer zu untersuchen. Auf der Basis einer Bewertung der internationalen Literatur zur Wirksamkeit des Fahrens mit Licht am Tag kommt die BASt zu dem Ergebnis, dass bei obligatorischer Einführung dieser Verkehrssicherheitsmaßnahme in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland eine deutliche Verbesserung der Verkehrssicherheit erwartet werden kann. Die Unfallrückgänge liegen in einer Größenordnung von über 3%. Die Befürchtung, dass sich demgegenüber Nachteile für schwächere Verkehrsteilnehmer, insbesondere Motorradfahrer, ergeben und deren Unfallhäufigkeit steigt, konnte nicht erhärtet werden. Die obligatorische Einführung des Fahrens mit Licht am Tag ist unter gesamtwirtschaftlichen Gesichtspunkten auch effizient. Den zu erwartenden Sicherheitsnutzen in Höhe von umgerechnet 1 Mrd. € je Jahr stehen Kosten in Folge des zunehmenden Kraftstoffverbrauchs und der damit verbundenen Emissionen in Höhe von 630 Mio. € (ungünstigster Fall: Fahren mit Abblendlicht) gegenüber. Auf lange Sicht sinken mit speziellen Tagfahrleuchten diese Kosten auf 150 Mio. € (Tagfahrleuchten in Glühlampentechnik) oder sogar nur 60 Millionen Euro (Tagfahrleuchten in LED-Technik). Es wird deshalb empfohlen, - für Neufahrzeuge eine Ausrüstung mit Tagfahrleuchten mit automatischer Aktivierung, gekoppelt an die Zündung, vorzuschreiben, - sowie einen Dämmerungsschalter zur automatischen Einschaltung des Abblendlichts obligatorisch einzuführen. Um einen nachteiligen Sicherheitseffekt durch die Durchmischung mit beleuchteten und unbeleuchteten Fahrzeugen zu vermeiden, ist für Altfahrzeuge ohne spezielle Tagfahrleuchten das Fahren mit Licht am Tag ganzjährig auf dem gesamten Straßennetz dringend zu empfehlen. Die Empfehlung für den bestehenden Kraftfahrzeugbestand sollte spätestens zum Zeitpunkt der Einführung der Ausstattungsvorschrift für die Neufahrzeuge ausgesprochen werden.
Advancing active safety towards the protection of vulnerable road users: the PROSPECT project
(2017)
Accidents involving Vulnerable Road Users (VRU) are still a very significant issue for road safety. According to the World Health Organisation, pedestrian and cyclist deaths account for more than 25% of all road traffic deaths worldwide. Autonomous Emergency Braking Systems have the potential to improve safety for these VRU groups. The PROSPECT project (Proactive Safety for Pedestrians and Cyclists) aims to significantly improve the effectiveness of active VRU safety systems compared to those currently on the market by expanding the scope of scenarios addressed by the systems and improving the overall system performance. The project pursues an integrated approach: Newest available accident data combined with naturalistic observations and HMI guidelines represent key inputs for the system specifications, which form the basis for the system development. For system development, two main aspects are considered: advanced sensor processing with situation analysis, and intervention strategies including braking and steering. All these concepts are implemented in several vehicle prototypes. Special emphasis is put on balancing system performance in critical scenarios and avoiding undesired system activations. For system validation, testing in realistic scenarios will be done. Results will allow the performance assessment of the developed concepts and a cost-benefit analysis. The findings within the PROSPECT project will contribute to the generation of state -of-the-art knowledge, technical innovations, assessment methodologies and tools for advancing Advanced Driver Assistance Systems towards the protection of VRUs. The introduction of a new generation safety system in the market will enhance VRU road safety in 2020-2025, contributing to the "Vision Zero" objective of no fatalities or serious injuries in road traffic set out in the Transport White Paper. Furthermore, the test methodologies and tools developed within the project shall be considered for the New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) future roadmaps, supporting the European Commission goal of halving the road toll in the 2011-2020 timeframe.
It is commonly agreed that active safety will have a significant impact on reducing accident figures for pedestrians and probably also bicyclists. However, chances and limitations for active safety systems have only been derived based on accident data and the current state of the art, based on proprietary simulation models. The objective of this article is to investigate these chances and limitations by developing an open simulation model. This article introduces a simulation model, incorporating accident kinematics, driving dynamics, driver reaction times, pedestrian dynamics, performance parameters of different autonomous emergency braking (AEB) generations, as well as legal and logical limitations. The level of detail for available pedestrian accident data is limited. Relevant variables, especially timing of the pedestrian appearance and the pedestrian's moving speed, are estimated using assumptions. The model in this article uses the fact that a pedestrian and a vehicle in an accident must have been in the same spot at the same time and defines the impact position as a relevant accident parameter, which is usually available from accident data. The calculations done within the model identify the possible timing available for braking by an AEB system as well as the possible speed reduction for different accident scenarios as well as for different system configurations. The simulation model identifies the lateral impact position of the pedestrian as a significant parameter for system performance, and the system layout is designed to brake when the accident becomes unavoidable by the vehicle driver. Scenarios with a pedestrian running from behind an obstruction are the most demanding scenarios and will very likely never be avoidable for all vehicle speeds due to physical limits. Scenarios with an unobstructed person walking will very likely be treatable for a wide speed range for next generation AEB systems.
Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) systems for pedestrians have been predicted to offer substantial benefit. On this basis, consumer rating programmes, e.g. Euro NCAP, are developing rating schemes to encourage fitment of these systems. One of the questions that needs to be answered to do this fully, is to determine how the assessment of the speed reduction offered by the AEB is integrated with the current assessment of the passive safety for mitigation of pedestrian injury. Ideally, this should be done on a benefit related basis. The objective of this research was to develop a benefit based methodology for assessment of integrated pedestrian protection systems with pre-crash braking and passive safety components. A methodology has been developed which calculates the cost of pedestrian injury expected, assuming all pedestrians in the target population (i.e. pedestrians impacted by the front of a passenger car) are impacted by the car being assessed, taking into account the impact speed reduction offered by the car’s AEB (if fitted) and the passive safety protection offered by the car’s frontal structure. For rating purposes, this cost can be normalised by comparing it to the cost calculated for selected cars. The methodology uses the speed reductions measured in AEB tests to determine the speed at which each casualty in the target population will be impacted. The injury to each casualty is then calculated using the results from standard Euro NCAP pedestrian impactor tests and injury risk curves. This injury is converted into cost using ‘Harm’ type costs for the body regions tested. These costs are weighted and summed. Weighting factors were determined using accident data from Germany and GB and the results of a benefit analysis performed by the EU FP7 AsPeCSS project. This resulted in German and GB versions of the methodology. The methodology was used to assess cars with good, average and poor Euro NCAP pedestrian ratings, with and without a current AEB system fitted. It was found that the decrease in casualty injury cost achieved by fitting an AEB system was approximately equivalent to that achieved by increasing the passive safety rating from poor to average. Also, it was found that the assessment was influenced strongly by the level of head protection offered in the scuttle and windscreen area because this is where head impact occurs for a large proportion of casualties. The major limitation within the methodology is the assumption used implicitly during weighting. This is that the cost of casualty injuries to body areas, such as the thorax, not assessed by the headform and legform impactors, and other casualty injuries such as those caused by ground impact, are related linearly to the cost of casualty injuries assessed by the impactors. A methodology for assessment of integrated pedestrian protection systems was developed. This methodology is of interest to consumer rating programmes which wish to include assessment of these systems. It also raises the interesting issue if the head impact test area should be weighted to reflect better real-world benefit.
Bicyclists and pedestrians belong to the most endangered groups in urban traffic. The EU-funded collaborative research project PROSPECT (‘PROactive Safety for PEdestrians and CyclisTs´) aims to significantly improve safety of those unprotected traffic participants by expanding the scope of scenarios covered by future active safety systems in passenger cars. Concepts for sensor control systems are built into three prototypes covering emergency interventions such as Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) as well as Autonomous Emergency Steering (AES). These systems tackle the well-known challenges of currently available systems including limited field-of-view by sensors, fuzzy path prediction, unreliable intent reaction times and slow reaction times. These highly innovative functions call for extensive validation methodologies based on already established consumer testing procedures. Since these functions are developed towards the prevention of intersection accidents in urban areas, a key aspect of the advanced testing methodology is the valid approximation of naturalistic trajectories using driving robots. Eventually, several simulator studies complemented a user acceptance and benefit analysis to evaluate the expected overall impact of the PROSPECT systems. The results achieved within the PROSPECT project are highly relevant for upcoming test protocols regarding the most critical situations with Vulnerable Road Users (VRU). With introducing the new methods in Euro NCAP (European New Car Assessment Programme) a significant increase in road safety is expected.
During the past five years, a Euro NCAP technical working group on pedestrian safety has been working on improving test and assessment procedures for enhanced passive pedestrian safety. After harmonizing the tools and procedures as much as possible with legislation, the work was mainly focused on the development of grid procedures for the pedestrian body regions head, upper leg with pelvis and lower leg with knee. Furthermore, the test parameters for the head and the upper leg were revised, a new lower legform impactor was introduced and the injury thresholds were adjusted or, where necessary, the injury criteria were changed. Finally, the assessment limits and colour scheme were refined, widening the range and adding two more colours in order to provide a more detailed description of the pedestrian safety performance. By abstaining from an assessment based on a worst point selection philosophy, the improved test point determination procedures that were introduced during the years 2013 and 2014 give a more homogeneous, high resolution picture of the pedestrian safety performance of the vehicle frontends. By using a uniform grid for each test zone approximately 200 test points, evenly distributed within each area, can now be assessed per vehicle. The introduction of the flexible pedestrian legform impactor in 2014 enables a more realistic injury prediction of the knee and the tibia using a biofidelic test tool. With the new upper legform test that has been launched in 2015 the assessment in that area is now focusing on the injured body region instead of the injury causing vehicle part and thus is aligned with the approach in the remaining body regions head and lower leg. At the same time, a monitoring test with the headform impactor against the bonnet leading edge is closing the possible gap between the test areas to identify injury causing vehicle parts that moved out of focus due to the introduction of the new upper legform test. The paper describes the new test and assessment procedures with their underlying philosophy and gives an outlook in terms of open issues, specifying the needs for further improvement in the future. In parallel to the work of the pedestrian subgroup, a Euro NCAP working group on heavy vehicles introduced a set of protocol changes in 2011 that were related to the assessment of M1 vehicles derived from commercial vehicles, with a gross vehicle weight between 2.5 and 3.5 tons and 8 or 9 seats. The paper also investigates the applicability of the new pedestrian test and assessment procedures to heavy vehicles.
A series of drop tests and vehicle tests with the adult head impactor according to Regulation (EC) 631/2009 and drop tests with the phantom head impactor according to UN Regulation No. 43 have been carried out by the German Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development (BMVBS). Aim of the test series was to study the injury risk for vulnerable road users, especially pedestrians, in case of being impacted by a motor vehicle in a way described within the European Regulations (EC) 78/2009 and (EC) 631/2009. Furthermore, the applicability of the phantom head drop test described in UN Regulation No. 43 for plastic glazing should be investigated. In total, 30 drop tests, thereof 18 with the adult head impactor and 12 with the phantom head impactor, and 49 vehicle tests with the adult head impactor were carried out on panes of laminated safety glass (VSG), polycarbonate (PC) and laminated polycarbonate (L-PC). The influence of parameters such as the particular material properties, test point locations, fixations, ambient conditions (temperature and impact angle) was investigated in detail. In general, higher values of the Head Injury Criterion (HIC) were observed in tests on polycarbonate glazing. As the HIC is the current criterion for the assessment of head injury risk, polycarbonate glazing has to be seen as more injurious in terms of vulnerable road user protection. In addition, the significantly higher rebound of the head observed in tests with polycarbonate glazing is suspected to lead to higher neck loads and may also cause higher injury risks in secondary impacts of vulnerable road users. However, as in all tests with PC glazing no damage of the panes was observed, the risk of skin cut injuries may be expected to be reduced significantly. The performed test series give no indication for the test procedure prescribed in UN Regulation No. 43 as a methodology to approve glass windscreen not being feasible for polycarbonate glazing, as all PC panes tested fulfilled the UN R 43 requirements. The performance of the windscreen area will not be relevant for vehicle type approval according to the upcoming UN Regulation for pedestrian protection. However, it is recommended that pedestrian protection being considered for plastic windscreens to ensure at least the same level of protection as glass windscreens.
In Germany the number of casualties in passenger car to pedestrian crashes has been reduced by a considerable amount of 40% as regards fatalities and 25% with regard to seriously injured pedestrians since the year 2001. Similar trends can be seen in other European countries. The reasons for that positive development are still under investigation. As infrastructural or behavioral changes do in general take a longer time to be effective in real world, explanations related to improved active and passive safety of passenger vehicles can be more relevant in providing answers for this trend. The effect of passive pedestrian protection " specified by the Euro NCAP pedestrian test result " is of particular interest and has already been analyzed by several authors. However, the number of vehicles with some valid Euro NCAP pedestrian score (post 2002 rating) was quite limited in most of those studies. To overcome this problem of small datasets German National Accident Records have been taken to investigate a similar objective but now based on a much bigger dataset. The paper uses German National Accident Records from the years 2009 to 2011. In total 65.140 records of pedestrian to passenger car crashes have been available. Considering crash parameters like accident location (rural / urban areas) etc., 27.143 of those crashes have been classified to be relevant for the analysis of passive pedestrian safety. In those 27.143 records 7.576 Euro NCAP rated vehicles (post 2002 rating) have been identified. In addition it was possible to identify vehicles which comply with pedestrian protection legislation (2003/102/EG) where phase 1 came into force in October 2005. A significant correlation between Euro NCAP pedestrian score and injury outcome in real-life car to pedestrian crashes was found. Comparing a vehicle scoring 5 points and a vehicle scoring 22 points, pedestrians" conditional probability of getting fatally injured is reduced by 35% (from 0.58% to 0.37%) for the later one. At the same time the probability of serious injuries can be reduced by 16% (from 27.4% to 22.9%). No significant injury reducing effect, associated with the introduction of pedestrian protection legislation (phase 1) was detected. Considerable effects have also been identified comparing diesel and gasoline cars. Higher engine displacements are associated with a lower injury risk for pedestrians. The most relevant parameter has been "time of accident", whereas pedestrians face a more than 2 times higher probability to be fatally injured during night and darkness as compared to daytime conditions.
Ausgehend von den Unfalldaten der letzten Jahre wird die Bedeutung von Fußgängerunfällen im Unfallgeschehen dargestellt. Betrachtet man die bei Unfällen getöteten Verkehrsteilnehmer, so sind am häufigsten Personen in Kraftfahrzeugen betroffen. Am zweithäufigsten werden, gemäß der Unfallstatistik, Fußgänger getötet. Eine Möglichkeit zur Verbesserung des Schutzes von Fußgängern und anderen sogenannten "ungeschützten Verkehrsteilnehmern" im Falle einer Kollision mit einem Kraftfahrzeug sind Maßnahmen am Fahrzeug. Um die Wirksamkeit derartiger Maßnahmen zu beurteilen, wurde durch das EEVC (European Enhanced Vehicle-Safety Committee) ein Prüfverfahren entwickelt. Es handelt sich dabei um ein Komponentenprüfverfahren, mit dem die Frontstruktur von Fahrzeugen, die bei einer Kollision mit einem Fußgänger hauptsächlich betroffen ist, geprüft wird. Es werden keine den gesamten Menschen repräsentierende Dummies verwendet, stattdessen werden Prüfkörper, die einzelne Körperteile simulieren, eingesetzt. Dieser EEVC Vorschlag wird geschildert. Darüber hinaus wird über Aktivitäten außerhalb des EEVC berichtet, sowie über den aktuellen Stand der Bemühungen der Europäischen Kommission in Bezug auf den Fußgängerschutz, die derzeit, auf Grundlage des Prüfvorschlages des EEVC, einen Vorschlag für eine Europäische Richtlinie erarbeitet.