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A means of assessing the passive safety of automobiles is a desirable instrument for legislative bodies, the automobile industry, and the consumer. As opposed to the dominating motor vehicle assessment criteria, such as engine power, spaciousness, aerodynamics and consumption, there are no clear and generally accepted criteria for assessing the passive safety of cars. The proposed method of assessment combines the results of experimental safety tests, carried out according to existing legally prescribed or currently discussed testing conditions, and a biomechanical validation of the loading values determined in the test. This evaluation is carried out with the aid of risk functions which are specified for individual parts of the body by correlating the results of accident analysis with those obtained by computer simulation. The degree of conformance to the respective protection criterion thus deduced is then weighted with factors which take into account the frequency of occurrence and the severity of the accident on the basis of resulting costs. Each of the test series includes at least two frontal and one lateral crash test against a deformable barrier. The computer-aided analysis and evaluation of the simulation results enables a vehicle-specific overall safety index as well as partial and individual safety values to be determined and plotted graphically. The passive safety provided by the respective vehicle under test can be defined for specific seating positions, special types of accident, or for individual endangered parts of the body.
The GRSP informal group on child restraint systems (CRS) finalised phase 1 of a new regulation for the homologation of CRS . This regulation is the subject of several discussions concerning the safety benefits and the advantages and disadvantages that certain specific points may bring. However, these discussions are sometimes not based on scientific facts and do not consider the whole package but only single items. Based on the experience of the CASPER partners in the fields of human behaviour, accident analysis, test procedures and biomechanics in the area of child safety, a consideration of the safety benefits of phase 1 of the new regulation and recommendations for phase 2 will be given.
It is well known that most accidents with pedestrians are caused by the driver not being alert or misinterpreting the situation. For that reason advanced forward looking safety systems have a high potential to improve safety for this group of vulnerable road users. Active pedestrian protection systems combine reduction of impact speed by driver warning and/or autonomous braking with deployment of protective devices shortly before the imminent impact. According to the Euro NCAP roadmap the Autonomous Emergency Braking system tests for Pedestrians Protection will be set in force from 2016 onwards. Various projects and organisations in Europe are developing performance tests and assessment procedures as accompanying measures to the Euro NCAP initiative. To provide synthesised input to Euro NCAP so-called Harmonisation Platforms (HP-) have been established. Their main goal is to foster exchange of information on key subjects, thereby generating a clear overview of similarities and differences on the approaches chosen and, on that basis, recommend on future test procedures. In this paper activities of the Harmonisation Platform 2 on the development of Test Equipment are presented. For the testing targets that mimic humans different sensing technologies are required. A first set of specifications for pedestrian targets and the propulsion systems as collected by Harmonisation Platform 2 are presented together with a first evaluation for a number of available tools.
Thoracic injuries are one of the main causes of fatally and severely injured casualties in car crashes. Advances in restraint system technology and airbags may be needed to address this problem; however, the crash test dummies available today for studying these injuries have limitations that prevent them from being able to demonstrate the benefits of such innovations. THORAX-FP7 was a collaborative medium scale project under the European Seventh Framework. It focused on the mitigation and prevention of thoracic injuries through an improved understanding of the thoracic injury mechanisms and the implementation of this understanding in an updated design for the thorax-shoulder complex of the THOR dummy. The updated dummy should enable the design and evaluation of advanced restraint systems for a wide variety (gender, age and size) of car occupants. The hardware development involved five steps: 1) Identification of the dominant thoracic injury types from field data, 2) Specification of biomechanical requirements, 3) Identification of injury parameters and necessary instrumentation, 4) Dummy hardware development and 5) Evaluation of the demonstrator dummy. The activities resulted in the definition of new biofidelity and instrumentation requirements for an updated thorax-shoulder complex. Prototype versions were realised and implemented in three THOR dummies for biomechanical evaluation testing. This paper documents the hardware developments and biomechanical evaluation testing carried out.
Evaluation of the performance of competitive headforms as test tools for interior headform testing
(2009)
The European Research Project APROSYS has evaluated the interior headform test procedure developed by EEVC WG 13, representing the head contact in the car during a lateral impact. One important aspect within this test procedure was the selection of an appropriate impactor. The WG13 procedure currently uses the Free Motion Headform as used within the FMVSS 201. The ACEA 3.5 kg headform used in Phase 1 of the European Directive and the future European Regulation on Pedestrian Protection is still discussed as a possible alternative. This paper reports work performed by the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) as a part of the APROSYS Task 1.1.3. The study compares the two headform impactors according to FMVSS and ACEA, in a series of basic tests in order to evaluate their sensitivity towards different impact angles, impact accuracy, the effect of differences to impactors of the same type and the effects of the repeatability and reproducibility of the test results. The test surface consisted of a steel tube covered with PU foam and PVC, representing the car interior to be tested. Despite of the higher mass of the FMH the HIC values of this impactor were generally lower than those of the ACEA headform. The FMH showed a higher repeatability of test results but a high sensitivity on the angle of roll, the spherical ACEA impactor performed better with regards to the reproducibility. In case of the ACEA impactor-, the angle of roll had no influence.
The European Enhanced Vehicle-safety Committee (EEVC) Working Group 13 for Side Impact Protection has been developing an Interior Headform Test Procedure to complement the full-scale Side Impact Test Procedure for Europe and for the proposed IHRA test procedures. In real world accidents interior head contacts with severe head injuries still occur, which are not always observed in standard side impact tests with dummies. Thus a means is needed to encourage further progress in head protection. At the 2003 ESV-Conference EEVC Working Group 13 reported the results on Interior Headform Testing. Further research has been performed since and the test procedure has been improved. This paper gives an overview of its latest status. The paper presents new aspects which are included in the latest test procedure and the research work leading to these enhancements. One topic of improvement is the definition of the Free Motion Headform (FMH) impactor alignment procedure to provide guidelines to minimize excessive headform chin contact and to minimize potential variability. Research activities have also been carried out on the definition of reasonable approach head angles to avoid unrealistic test conditions. Further considerations have been given to the evaluation of head airbags, their potential benefits and a means of ensuring protection for occupants regardless of seating position and sitting height. The paper presents the research activities that have been made since the last ESV Conference in 2003 and the final proposal of the EEVC Headform Test Procedure.
Safety of light goods vehicles - findings from the German joint project of BASt, DEKRA, UDV and VDA
(2011)
Light goods vehicles (LGVs) are an important part of the vehicle fleet, providing a vital component in the European transportation system. On the other hand, LGVs are in the focus of public discussion regarding road safety. In order to analyse the accident situation of LGVs in an objective manner, Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt), VDA, DEKRA and German Insurers Accident Research (UDV) launched a joint project. The aim of this project, which will be finished by mid of 2011, is to identify reasonable measures which will further improve the safety of LGVs. For the first time, these partners jointly together conducted a research project and put together their know-how in accident research. Analyses are based on real-life accident data from the GIDAS database, the Accident Database of UDV (UDB), the DEKRA database and national statistics. The findings deliver answers to questions within the arena of future legislative actions and consumer protection activities. The analyses of databases cover areas of primary and secondary safety of LGVs with a special focus on advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), driver behaviour as well as partner and occupant protection. Key figures from national statistics are used to highlight hotspots of accidents of LGVs in Germany. Finally, the proposed countermeasures are assessed regarding their potential effectiveness. Amongst others, the results show that the accident situation of LGVs is very similar to that of passenger cars. Noteworthy variations could be found in collisions with pedestrians, at reversing and regarding accident causes. Occupant safety of LGVs is on a higher level compared to cars. Results indicate that seatbelt use is on a significantly lower level compared to cars. This leads to higher-than-average injury risk for unbelted LGV occupants. When it comes to partner protection, there are problems with compatibility at LGVs. For car occupants there is a very high injury risk when colliding with a LGV. It indicates that higher passive safety test standards for LGVs would be counterproductive if they further increase stiffness of LGVs. The analysis of LGV-pedestrian accidents shows that pedestrian kinematic differs significantly from car-pedestrian accidents. At this point, existing pedestrian related test standards developed for cars cannot be adopted to LGVs. When it comes to active safety, ESC proved its effectiveness once again. Beyond that, rear view cameras, advanced emergency braking systems and lane departure warning systems show a safety potential, too. In addition to any technical countermeasures previously discussed, the importance of the driver behavior and attitude regarding the accident risk was investigated. In order to develop successful actions it is important to understand the main target population. In the case of LGV especially the crafts business and smaller companies are the major contributors the safety issue.
The purpose of this paper is to review injuries found in real world lateral collisions and determine the mechanisms responsible for certain kinds of biomechanical failure. During the last years the distribution of deaths among the different types of accidents has changed. Lateral collisions now are the most frequent cause of fatal and other serious injuries. Every third accident is an impact from the side, while every second fatality is the result of a lateral accident. Just a few years ago this value was no higher than 30%. This is probably the result of increasing safety standards for frontal collisions (airbags, seatbelt usage, structural improvements of cars, etc.). Although the number of registered vehicles increased, the total amount of fatalities decreased during the same period. Thus it is now necessary to pay greater attention to the lateral accident situation in order to improve road safety and decrease the number of traffic injuries. Several European organisations had decided to launch the project SID2000, which was funded by the European Commission, with the intention of gathering more knowledge on injuries occurring in lateral accidents and the mechanisms that lead to such injuries. This should enable the group to define the requirements for a new side impact dummy (SID) to be designed. Within the same project the existing TNO-EUROSID 1 was enhanced by another group and the experience gained has now enabled allowed to design a better measuring device for side impacts. The data used for this contribution came from sources from all over Europe and had to be gathered in such a manner that as many accident parameters as possible were taken into account.
In the paper it is investigated to what extend one can extrapolate the detailed accident database GIDAS (German In-Depth Accident Study), with survey area Hanover and Dresden region, to accident behavior in other regions and countries within Europe and how such an extrapolation can be implemented and evaluated. Moreover, it is explored what extent of accident data for the target country is necessary for such an extrapolation and what can be done in situations with sparse and low accident information in a target region. It will be shown that a direct transfer of GIDAS injury outcomes to other regions does not lead to satisfactory results. But based on GIDAS and using statistical decision tree methods, an extrapolation methodology will be presented which allows for an adequate prediction of the distribution of injury severity in severe traffic accidents for European countries. The method consists essentially of a separation of accidents into well-described subgroups of accidents within which the accident severity distribution does not vary much over different regions. In contrast the distribution over the various subgroups of accidents typically is rather different between GIDAS and the target. For the separation into the subgroups meaningful accident parameters (like accident type, traffic environment, type of road etc.) have been selected. The developed methodology is applied to GIDAS data for the years 1999-2012 and is evaluated with police accident data for Sweden (2002 to 2012) and the United Kingdom (2004 to 2010). It is obtained that the extrapolation proposal has good to very good predictive power in the category of severe traffic accidents. Moreover, it is shown that iterative proportional fitting enables the developed extrapolation method to lead to a satisfactory extrapolation of accident outcomes even to target regions with sparse accident information. As an important potential application of the developed methodology the a priori extrapolation of effects of (future) safety systems, the operation of which can only be well assessed on the basis of very detailed GIDAS accident data, is presented. Based on the evaluation of the presented extrapolation method it will be shown that GIDAS very well represents severe accidents, i.e. accidents with at least one severely or fatally injured person involved, for other countries in Europe. The developed extrapolation method reaches its limits in cases for which only very little accident information is available for the target region.
The 2BeSafe project (2-Wheeler Behaviour and Safety) is a collaborative project (co financed by the European Commission) that aims to study the naturalistic behaviour of Powered-Two-Wheeler (PTW) riders in normal and critical riding situations. That includes the interaction between PTW riders and other road users and possible conflicts between them. One of the predominant causes of accidents involving PTWs is that PTWs are often overlooked by other road users. One task of the project lead by BASt therefore deals with possible improvements in conspicuity and the development of recommendations. Particularly using the findings of the studies on conflict situations, promising lighting arrangements to enhance conspicuity of PTWs during the day and at night are selected. An abstract recognizing pattern for PTWs is defined, enabling other road users (e.g. car drivers) to clearly identify riders. Lamps and outfit like lighting configurations of different colours, different helmet lights, reflect / luminescent clothing parts and retro-reflective markings are designed and manufactured. Then, the different solutions are tested in a laboratory setting using experimental motorcycles together with riders to which the equipment is fitted. As result a proposal for a uniform signal pattern or lamp configuration in the front of all motorcycles and riders will be outlined. The contribution first gives a short overview of the topics of the research project that deal with conflicts and their connection with poor conspicuity and then presents in detail the methods used in the activities concerning solutions for the improvement of conspicuity together with first results.
Despite the steadily declining number of pedestrian fatalities and injuries in most European countries during recent decades, pedestrian protection is still of great importance in the European Union as well as in Germany. This is because they still constitute a large proportion of road user casualties and are more likely to suffer serious and fatal injuries than most other road users. In 1999 only car occupants suffered more fatal injuries than pedestrians in Germany. In December 1998, EEVC WG 17 completed their review and updating of the EEVC WG 10 pedestrian test procedure that made it possible to evaluate the protection afforded to pedestrians by the front of passenger cars in an accident. Within the scope of this procedure, four different impactors are used representing those parts of the body which are injured very often and/or very seriously in vehicle-pedestrian-collisions. In a project executed by IKA and BASt, a small family car was tested according to the EEVC WG 17 test procedure. Afterwards modifications to the car were carried out in order to improve the pedestrian protection provided by the vehicle design. There were certain restrictions placed on the level of modifications undertaken, e.g. only minor modifications to vehicle styling and to the vehicle structures, which provide passenger protection. The redesigned vehicle was tested again using the WG 17 test procedure. The test results of the modified vehicle were compared with those of the standard vehicle and evaluated. The results show that considered measures for pedestrian protection in many areas of the vehicle front structure and the use of innovative techniques can lead to a significant reduction of the loads of pedestrians at an acceptable expense.
Many big cities in Europe and elsewhere in the world have problems managing the traffic especially during rush hours. The improvement of the parking problematic and environmental protection as well are important aspects for the future traffic design of urban areas. To improve the traffic situation the development of new traffic concepts and alternative vehicles are required. The BMW company has developed a new type of two-wheel vehicle. This two-wheeler constitutes a totally new concept. BMW implemented a lot of safety features, such as a structure made up of rollover bars and a crush element instead of a front protecting plate. Furthermore the driver can secure himself with two safety belts. The paper contains a description of the novel two-wheel vehicle concept designed so far. BMW's concept and the safety features are also explained. The Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) was given the task of assessing the concept as a whole with regard to the active and passive safety and the exemption of the obligation to wear a helmet. The expertise concluded that the BMW two-wheeler concept has a very high safety standard. Some extracts of the expertise, in particular the investigations concerning the exemption of the obligation to wear a helmet are presented. Common legal requirements for the vehicle registration of vehicle concepts similar to the BMW two-wheeler in Germany have been formulated.
Within the process of integrating passenger airbags in the vehicle fleet a problem of compatibility between the passenger airbag and rear-facing child restraint systems was recognised. Especially in the US several accidents with children killed by the passenger airbag were recorded. Taking into account these accidents the deactivation of a present passenger airbag is mandatory if a child is carried in a rear-facing child restraint system at the front passenger seat in all member states of the European Union. This rule is in force since the deadline of 2003/20/EC at the latest. In the past a passenger airbag either could not be disabled or could only be disabled by a garage. Today there are a lot of different possibilities for the car driver himself to disable the airbag. Solutions like an on/off-switch or the automatic detection of a child restraint system are mentioned as an example. Taking into account the need for the deactivation of front passenger airbags two types of misuse can occur: transportation of an infant while the airbag is (still) enabled and transportation of an adult, while the airbag is disabled, respectively. Within a research project funded by BASt both options of misuse were analysed utilising two different types of surveys amongst users (field observations and interviews, Internet-questionnaires). In addition both analysis of accident data and crash tests for an updated assessment of the injury risk caused by the front passenger airbag were conducted. Both surveys indicate a low risk of misuse. Most of the misuse cases were observed in older cars, which offer no easy way to disable the airbag. For systems, which detect a child seat automatically, no misuse could be found. The majority of misuses in cars equipped with a manual switch were caused by reasons of oblivion. Also the accident analysis indicates a minor risk of misuse. From more than 300 cases of the GIDAS accident sample that were analysed, only 24 children were using the front passenger seat in cars equipped with a front passenger airbag. In most of these cases the airbag was deactivated. When misuse occurred the injury severity was low. However, when analysing German single accidents the fatality risk caused by the front passenger airbag became obvious. From the technical point of view, there were important changes in the design of passenger airbags in recent years. Not only volume and shape were modified, but also the mounting position of the entire airbag module was changed fundamentally. Even if these findings do not allow obtaining general conclusions, a clear tendency of less danger by airbags could be identified. For future vehicle development a safe combination of airbags and rear faced baby seats seems to be possible in the long term. This would mean that both types of misuse could be eliminated. For parents an easier use of child seat and car would be the result.
For the assessment of vehicle safety in frontal collisions, the crash compatibility between the colliding vehicles is crucial. Compatibility compromises both the self protection and the partner protection properties of vehicles. For the accident data analysis, the CCIS (GB) and GIDAS (DE) in-depth data bases were used. Selection criteria were frontal car accidents with car in compliance with ECE R94. For this study belted adult occupants in the front seats sustaining MAIS 2+ injuries were studied. Following this analysis FIMCAR concluded that the following compatibility issues are relevant: - Poor structural interaction (especially low overlap and over/underriding) - Compartment strength - Frontal force mismatch with lower priority than poor structural interaction In addition injuries arising from the acceleration loading of the occupant are present in a significant portion of frontal crashes. Based on the findings of the accident analysis the aims that shall be addressed by the proposed assessment approach were defined and priorities were allocated to them. The aims and priorities shall help to decide on suitable test procedures and appropriate metrics. In general it is anticipated that a full overlap and off-set test procedure is the most appropriate set of tests to assess a vehicle- frontal impact self and partner protection.
The European Enhanced Vehicle-safety Committee wants to promote the use of more biofidelic child dummies and biomechanical based tolerance limits in regulatory and consumer testing. This study has investigated the feasibility and potential impact of Q-dummies and new injury criteria for child restraint system assessment in frontal impact. European accident statistics have been reviewed for all ECE-R44 CRS groups. For frontal impact, injury measures are recommended for the head, neck, chest and abdomen. Priority of body segment protection depends on the ECE-R44 group. The Q-dummy family is able to reflect these injuries, because of its biofidelity performance and measurement capabilities for these body segments. Currently, the Q0, Q1, Q1.5, Q3 and Q6 are available representing children of 0, 1, 1.5, 3 and 6 years old. These Q-dummies cover almost all dummy weight groups as defined in ECE-R44. Q10, representing a 10 year-old child, is under development. New child dummy injury criteria are under discussion in EEVC WG12. Therefore, the ECE-R44 criteria are assessed by comparing the existing P-dummies and new Q-dummies in ECE-R44 frontal impact sled tests. In total 300 tests covering 30 CRSs of almost all existing child seat categories are performed by 11 European organizations. From this benchmark study, it is concluded that the performance of the Q-dummy family is good with respect to repeatability of the measurement signals and the durability of the dummies. Applying ECE-R44 criteria, the first impression is that results for P- and Q-dummy are similar. For child seat evaluation the potential merits of the Q-dummy family lie in the extra measurement possibilities of these dummies and in the more biofidelic response.
Since integrated safety systems combine active and passive safety elements in one safety system, it is necessary to define new procedures to evaluate vehicle safety from the overall system point of view. The main goal of the ASSESS project is to develop harmonized and standardized assessment procedures for collision mitigation and avoidance systems. Methods and Data Sources: In ASSESS, procedures are developed for: driver behaviour evaluation, pre-crash system performance evaluation, crash performance evaluation, socio-economic assessment. This paper will concentrate on the activities related to the crash evaluation. The objective is to perform simulations, sled tests and crash tests in order tounderstand the influence of the activation of the pre-crash systems on the occupants" injuries during the crash phase. When a traffic accident is unavoidable, pre-crash systems work on various safety devices in order to improve the vehicle occupants" protection. Braking assistance and adaptive restraint systems are the main pre-crash systems whose effect on the occupants" protection will be described in this paper. Results: The results will be a description of the effect of the activation of the pre-crash systems on the crash phase. Additionally, a set of recommendations for future methodology developments will be delivered. Furthermore, a first approach to the study of the effect of the pre-crash systems activation on the occupants" protection when the impact is unavoidable will be presented. This effect will be quantified using the biomechanical values obtained from the simulation and testing activities and their related injury risks. Simulation and testing activities will consider the following scenarios: - No activation of any pre-crash system, - Activation of one or a combination of several pre-crash systems. In this way, differences in the results obtained from different scenarios will show the effect of each pre-crash system separately during the crash phase. Discussion and Limitations: The set of activities developed in this research project is limited by the fact that with the given resources only a limited number of vehicle models could be investigated. In addition, there are also limitations related to the injury risk curves and the passive safety tools currently on the market. Conclusion and Relevance to session submitted: The paper will present a complete analysis of the effect of pre-crash systems during the crash phase when the impact is unavoidable. Details, limitations and first application experience based on a few examples will be discussed. Currently, there is not any regulation, assessment program, or other similar official procedure able to assess pre-crash systems during the crash phase. This project comprises phases of traffic accidents which have been historically analysed separately, and aims to evaluate them taking into account their interrelationship. ASSESS is one of the first European projects which deals in depth with the concept of integrated safety, defining methodologies to analyse vehicle safety from a global point of view.
Airbags are, together with the three-point belt, the most effective passive safety equipment of vehicles. However, literature shows that sound pressure levels of up to 170 dB can occur during airbag deployment. A literature review revealed no systematic experimental data on possible hearing loss by airbag deployment, that also takes any other crash accompanied noise into account, such as deformation and impact noise. Also the rising number of airbags per vehicle resulting in a higher number of deployed airbags in an accident was not addressed with respect to hearing loss. Thus, an extensive test matrix of noise measurements during airbag deployments was conducted including onboard measuring during crashes and static measurements. Dynamic and static experiments with single and multiple airbag deployments were conducted. The results of this study show, that in the analyzed crash constellations the acoustic emission of the collision as well as the car deformation can trigger the stapedius reflex before the airbag deployment. The stapedius reflex protects the inner ear at least partially in case of dangerous sound levels. However, it seems that multiple airbag deployments in a short sequence pose a considerable risk for hearing impairments despite the fully contracted stapedius muscle. Further and in line with Price et al. (2013) it was found that the risk of hearing loss is lower with closed windows. The analysis of patient and accident data showed no link between airbag deployment and hearing loss. This might be caused by low case numbers of reported hearing loss problems up to now. In conclusion the results show that a singular analysis of the sound pressure of airbag deployments without crash accompanied noises is not sufficient as the protective effect of the stapedius reflex is neglected. Still, successive airbag deployments in a short timeframe raise the risk of hearing loss. Further investigation on hearing impairment due to airbag deployment and triggering of the stapedius reflex is needed and the data acquisition of accidents and patients should consider hearing loss aspects.
The development of tyre- and truck-manufacturers leads to the direction to introduce wide base single tyres (size 495/45R22,5) instead of twin tyres on the driving axle of trucks, tractors and busses. To study the driving behaviour and safety of various trucks and units with different tyre combinations and loading conditions was the aim of the study. A computer-aided simulation was used for this investigation. Drive tests with a 40 t unit with prototype single tyres on the drive axle were carried out to verify the simulation. Alterations in driving behaviour and driving safety are mainly dependent on the tyre cornering stiffness. The prototype wide single tyres had a higher lateral stiffness which leads to a higher degree of under-steering (safer driving behaviour). The altered spring base on the drive axle had no influence on the side- tilt stability of vehicle combinations but the solo truck profited from the higher rear axle roll stiffness (less danger for roll-over accidents). As far as the driving safety is concerned nothing speaks against wide base tyres on the drive axle. The simulation of a tyre defect in a bend (assuming 40% of the max. transferable side force for the flat tyre) showed no increased danger using wide single tyres. Later driving tests showed however the need of tyre run flat possibilities to avoid jack-knifing of road trains. Also tyre pressure monitoring systems and electronic stability programs for the trucks are advised.
The Swedish National Road Administration (SNRA), the Japanese Automobile Research Institute (JARI) and the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) are co-operating in the International Harmonized Research Activities on Intelligent Transportation Systems (IHRA-ITS). Under this umbrella a joint study was conducted. The overall objective of this study was to contribute to the definition and validation of a "battery of tools" which enables a prediction and an assessment of changes in driver workload due to the use of in-vehicle information systems (IVIS) while driving. In this sense \"validation\" means to produce empirical evidence from which it can be concluded that these methods reliably discriminate between IVIS which differ in terms of relevant features of the HMI-design. Additionally these methods should also be sensitive to the task demands imposed on the driver by the traffic situation and their interactions with HMI-design. To achieve these goals experimental validation studies (on-road and in the simulator) were performed in Sweden, Germany and Japan. As a common element these studies focused on the secondary task methodology as an approach to the study of driver workload. In a joint German-Swedish on-road study the Peripheral Detection Task (PDT) was assessed with respect to its sensitivity to the complexity of traffic situations and effects of different types of navigation systems. Results show that the PDT performance of both the German and the Swedish subjects reflects the task demands of the traffic situations better than those of the IVIS. However, alternative explanations are possible which will be examined by further analyses. Results of this study are supplemented by the Japanese study where informational demands induced by various traffic situations were analysed by using a simple arithmetic task as a secondary task. Results of this study show that relatively large task demands can be expected even from simple traffic situations.
Automated driving will provide many kinds of benefits - some direct and some indirect. The benefits originate at the individual level, from changes in the behaviour of drivers and travellers with regard to driving and mobility, ending up with benefits at the social level via changes in the whole transport system and society, where many of the current planning and operations paradigms are likely to be transformed by automated driving. There may also be disbenefits, particularly at a social level, for example in intensity of travel which could result in additional congestion and increased use of natural resources. There may also be unintended consequences. For example, we do not know the impacts on public transport: driverless vehicles could provide a means to a lower cost service provision, but the availability of automated cars could lead to more car travel at the expense of collective transport.