Road safety is a classic systems engineering problem. It involves three main systems; the road environment, the vehicle and the driver. While each system can contribute individually to improving safety, the reliability of the road system depends heavily on the interactions between these three systems with road trauma invariably the consequence of a system interaction failure. In advancing in the direction of a "Vision Zero" each system must be designed with the other in mind so that the interfaces can be managed optimally. This was the philosophy applied to the BA Falcon Intelligent Safety Systems. This paper describes the BA Falcon safety features, designed to manage the interfaces between the vehicle occupants and the road environment, which deliver significant advances in vehicle safety. The paper also describes how systems engineering was employed to cascade high-level vehicle design targets down to system, sub-system and ultimately component level so that the role in delivering the high-level safety objectives is understood for each part of the vehicle system. (Author/publisher) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E210298.
Abstract