Progression towards legislation for pedestrian protection in vehicle impacts will soon lead to significant changes for vehicle manufacturers and headlight suppliers, should the EEVC pedestrian protection recommendations become a legal requirement. Currently, the proposed upper leg injury criteria are the most difficult to achieve within the anticipated legislation. In some cases injury targets can only be satisfied if the leg impactor has 200mm of intrusion space without contacting hard points. MIRA has investigated the effects of pedestrian protection requirements on current headlight systems, in order to provide guidelines for future headlight design. This paper focuses on the considerations required to achieve a pedestrian friendly headlight, including package space, robustness of design, integration within the host vehicle and the influence of these issues on vehicle styling. For the covering abstract see ITRD E123380.
Samenvatting