Volvo’s pioneering work on the pedestrian protection has received the award from the 2013 Global NCAP Innovation. The award was received by the Lotta Jakobsson senior technical specialist at Volvo Car Safety Center.
At the ESV conference, Jakobsson showed the presentation about the Volvo cars that possess outstanding achievement in pedestrian protection. She presented the paper that described the new pedestrian protection technology used in the new Volvo V40.
The main purpose of the pedestrian airbag is to protect the road dwellers from the impact when they hit the bonnet or the windscreen, where the risk of head injury is quite high.
In china about 25 percent of the traffic casualties are pedestrians, in Europe the figure is 14 percent and USA 12 percent. Far more number of pedestrians got injured in the traffic. Most of the lethal injuries are caused by the hard structure of the car like windscreen and A-pillars.
In 2010 Volvo launched the pedestrian detection system with full auto brake. The system was able to avoid collision at the speed up to 35kmph. At the higher speed it tends to reduce the car’s speed as much as possible.
Seven sensors are embedded in front of the car that transmits signal to a control unit. When car comes in contact with an object the control unit then evaluates that if it happens to be a human like figure then the pedestrian airbag will be deployed.
The bonnet hinge has been made with the pyrotechnical release mechanism that pulls out a pin and releases the rear of bonnet. During the inflation of the airbag bonnet is raised by up to 10 cms.
These added gaps allow the bonnet to absorb the energy which results in damping effect in order to reduce injury to pedestrian’s head and chest.