Method to Assess the Effectiveness of Integrated Pedestrian Protection Safety Systems.

The effectiveness analysis assesses the benefit of future safety systems in terms of collision mitigation or collision avoidance based on real lifeaccident data. The safety systems are evaluated by case-by-case analyses based on in-depth accident data (e.g. GIDAS). For this purpose an innovative simulation environment was developed that recreates the technical specification of the proposed system consisting of function algorithm, sensor, and actuators. Therefore results of component tests and complete system tests are included into the simulation. The accidents from the database are varied in the simulation by applying stochastic methods, guaranteeing the validity of the results from a statistical viewpoint. In addition to technical parameters such as a reduction in collision speed, the evaluation also includes a reduction in collision probability. Furthermore, when evaluating the functions a distinction is made between controlled and regulated actions. For each type a special simulation technique is used, which on theone hand is a purely offline analysis of previously simulated data and onthe other hand an online or in-the-loop simulation. In order to be able to consider driver reactions on defined warning strategies realistically, it is essential to integrate a driver behaviour model into the simulation. To determine the driver behaviour, studies with probands are conducted using a new simulator technology. The test scenarios for these proband studies are based on accidents of the internal Audi accident research unit (AARU) database. In order to convert the technical evaluation parameters of theaccident, e.g. collision speed, to injury severity, injury-risk-functionsare required. To sum up, a new method of assessing the effectiveness of integrated safety systems will be presented, which incorporates new simulation techniques, driving experiments and real life accident data to assess a well-founded evaluation of integrated safety systems. The full text of this paper may be found at: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv21/09-0398.pdf For the covering abstract see ITRD E145407.