Automotive Vehicle Safety

George A. Peters, Barbara J. Peters

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780415263337
• eBook ISBN: 9781134574803
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Tecnología e ingeniería
• Subtopic: Diseño industrial

Automotive Vehicle Safety is a unique academic text, practical design guide and valuable reference book. It provides information that is essential for specialists to make better-informed decisions. The book identifies and discusses key generic safety principles and their applications and includes decision-making criteria, examples and remedies. It

1: Introduction to vehicle safety

(a) Objectives

The purpose of this publication is to provide useful information that could save lives, prevent personal injury, reduce property damage, and generally improve the individual’s quality of life.

It is assumed that a better understanding of good design practices will enable product improvement that manifests significantly less risk to humans, machines, and the environment. A better comprehension of the overall requirements may help to reduce system errors and faults. A broader appreciation of societal interests may help in balancing risks and determining what is reasonable under the circumstances. In some respects, this document could serve as a complementary ‘safety design manual’ or supplemental ‘safety training handbook’ for a wide variety of industrial and commercial enterprises. Its academic importance should be self-evident.

(b) Good intentions are not enough!

Despite the good intentions of many engineers, safety problems regularly occur in a wide variety of products, processes, and systems. If safety were merely a matter of good intentions and common sense, there would be few if any accidents, recalls, liability fears, lost profits, or problems of insurability, loss of use of cash reserves, and possible adverse publicity that could affect market shares. Design safety is not achieved by chance or hope, complacency or compliance, the application of ethical and moral values, or simple exhortations as to exemplary safety objectives. Achieving safety is a fairly sophisticated process and requires special effort.

We have entered a new era of fairly constant design improvements, more radical changes in design, ever more compressed design-to-market cycles, high-volume production schedules, more diverse marketplaces, and significant world trade competition. Safety problems can suddenly appear and have dramatic consequences. Assurance of acceptable levels of product safety cannot be left to chance and the good intentions of individuals or companies. Specific techniques and assurance procedures are corporate health essentials.

(c) Adequacy of knowledge

A design engineer may have had very little academic preparation or on-the-job training in terms of specific design safety principles, techniques, or knowledge. The engineer may be suddenly assigned an important design safety function in connection with his work. There may be little or nothing available in terms of sources of information. The company safety guidelines, engineering manuals, or policy documents may abound with good-sounding generalities, but fail to address specific questions or provide the necessary help. The design supervisor or reviewer may have had little more in terms of design safety experience and knowledge, except for some highly specialized but very limited applications. The engineer may try to the best of his capability, but a lack of relevant knowledge or available tools of the trade may convert an otherwise capable engineer into a mistake-prone learner. This book may furnish some guidance and awareness that could serve to compensate for the lack of knowledge that is so prevalent in many industries.

(d) Someone else’s responsibility

During the design process, the focus is usually on iteratively obtaining desired product performance, correcting problems as they arise, meeting strict schedules, obtaining design approvals, attempting to meet all specifications and requirements, and seeking to obtain customer satisfaction. Under such circumstances, safety may be assumed to be adequate and relegated to a secondary service function. It is also assumed that if there are potential safety problems, they will receive attention, testing, and correction by others. In some companies, safety is considered almost as a non-design or after-design function. In essence, design safety may be delegated, relegated, or simply overlooked in a large compartmentalized company bureaucracy. It may be a broadly shared responsibility, superficially implemented by all, with no real accountability.

An example of ‘shifting responsibility’ may be found in an engineer’s opinion as to the ‘safe use’ of a product. The eventual product user is generally urged or expected to apply common sense in dealing with the product, to follow directions and instructions correctly, to avoid misuse and abuse, and to exercise due care for his own safety. This shifts the responsibility to the consumer who, logically, should act with great care as to his own personal safety. If there should be effective safe-use communication with the consumer, user, operator, worker, or bystander, it could reduce accidents. But history has shown that it will not eliminate accidents and sometimes is virtually ineffective. This is the reason why a reverse shifting of responsibility has occurred. The engineer may be considered to have more pertinent knowledge and be in a better position to design-out problems (hazard prevention) to completely eliminate the prospective source of injury. In essence, the reverse-shift is urging the engineer to exercise greater care in the design of a product, process, or service.

The lesson to be learned is that design safety is a sophisticated task, there should be clear responsibility for it, and it should not be diffused as always being someone else’s responsibility.

(e) The hear-no-evil problem

During the design process, those who convey ‘good news’ are very welcome. This is particularly true if it involves meeting a difficult schedule milepost, passing a key test, achieving a higher than expected performance level, or coming in under budget. Those who convey negative messages usually suffer the fate of the unwelcome messenger. Unfortunately, the discovery of a possible safety problem is ‘bad news’ because of its negative effect in terms of required problem resolution efforts, added cost, and time delay consequences. Since design managers do not welcome bad news and this may be perceived as a desire to hear no evil, the design engineer may not want to frustrate the managers by conveying bad news about safety problems. In essence, it is politically unpopular to discuss a safety problem unless there is overwhelming credible evidence as to its actual existence, and even that may be vigorously challenged. This suggests that the design safety process be established and conducted in such a manner that it cannot be neutralized, fudged, or subjectively contorted to produce only good news. The philosophical approach should be that early discovery of a potential safety problem saves the considerable time and cost that would have to be expended at a later date.

(f) Generic implications

This book may seem to focus on product safety, but the principles and techniques are actually generic and have wide potential application. The obvious emphasis is on automotive vehicles, but this could be considered illustrative in character and analogous to what might be applied in other industries.

Vehicle safety may seem to be exclusively a design engineering function. But, as this book clearly reveals, vehicle safety problems may originate from damage during fabrication, assembly-line errors and omissions, and flaws during manufacture that are intentional in character. Safety problems may be caused by damage during vehicle transport to the dealer, particularly for import vehicles. Dealers may introduce problems during showroom demonstrations and rides, or from service and repair discrepancies. The owner-operator may subject the vehicle to misuse, abuse, or a failure to understand proper care. Aftermarket accessories and customizing of vehicles may affect vehicle safety. Thus, examples of causation from a variety of sources and relevant remedies are a hallmark of this volume.

The achievements of the automotive industry surround us and have fundamentally changed the world in which we live. The benefits are obvious. The resulting safety problems are well known and some are highly publicized. There are now many more companies in the automotive industry, they are more widely dispersed geographically around the world, they produce many more diverse and complex products, and the market for a greater variety of self-propelled vehicles in more countries is increasing. This increases the probability that more safety problems will emerge, and these may challenge objectives relating to corporate and social responsibility. Therefore, this book, which provides a comprehensive review on how to prevent vehicle safety problems, is needed by engineers, managers, and corporate officers. Safety assurance is not good luck; it must be earned by attention to detail.

2: Basic concepts of vehicle safety

(a) Underlying principles

In approaching any safety issue, there are some underlying principles that could provide valuable guidance in terms of initial problem-recognition. They may furnish some helpful perceptions related to a possible risk situation. They also assist in defining probable needs and in the formulation of an effective problem-solving plan. What is to be done, how it is to be done, and what is to be accomplished depends on how the situation is defined within a relevant knowledge and value system (a reference base). Some specialists seem to know immediately exactly what should or could be done, because their thought processes are positively guided by underlying principles of safety. In essence, understanding the full meaning of the following key principles is a necessary precursor to all other safety activities.

(1) The public health analogy

Vehicle safety can be conceived as a public health concern when the overall injury and fatality rate appears to be comparatively high. The emergency care physician makes diagnoses and provides for medical treatment and care for automobile accident injuries, so there is direct contact between the practice of medicine and the source and flow of automobile accident patients. One of the objectives of preventive medicine is to reduce injuries from all sources, particularly when injuries and diseases seem to be associated with a particular industry. This may be one reason why some emergency room physicians have been chosen to become administrators of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the United States and automobile accident problems are widely discussed in medical journals throughout the world.

A public health approach carries with it the concepts, language, techniques, and perspectives both of medicine and of allied health professionals. The focus is not just occupant protection, crashworthiness, and pedestrian safety. It includes topics with which public health specialists are familiar, such as the effects of toxic chemicals, particulates such as asbestos and silica, and other materials. They are alert to harmfulto- health material found in vehicles, vehicle assembly plants, converter and private label facilities, and automobile dealer showrooms and their service, parts replacement, repair, and rebuilding activities.

In essence, a public health approach is of much broader scope than the focus of most automobile design engineers, whether they are primarily concerned with components, vehicles, or traffic systems. Some of the language of public health has permeated design safety engineering, but some of the logic, reasoning, and objectives remain a difficult analogy for many to comprehend. However, they constitute a vital portion of this book.

(2) Prioritization of effort

In dealing with vehicle safety problems, past experience has clearly shown what is the most effective and economical in terms of problem-solving remedies. A priority has emerged in terms of objectives, although each problem tends to be somewhat unique and to require more than one objective. The first priority is to find a design alternative, improvement, or remedy. The next lower priority may be given to safeguards or addon safety devices, features, enhancements, or protective equipment. For example, instead of changing the design, protective barriers or covers may be attached. A lesser priority would be warnings designed to foster informed avoidance behavior. These are generally reserved for hazards that constitute what is called residual risk and applied only after design and safeguarding has achieved all that is reasonably possible. The least effective, but sometimes necessary, priorities are operating instruction, personal training, and technical communication guidance. They are the least effective because they attempt to influence or control human behavior that can be inconsistent, with rapid loss of memory, and subject to mistakes and errors. They are costly because they are not permanent, but need renewal, updating, prompting, and incentives for relearning. However, there are situations where detailed instructions and technical guidance may be necessary; for example, troubleshooting for infrequent malfunctions and component failure.

To be avoided are calls for safe use, avoidance of misuse and abuse, and to be careful. For example, encouraging automobile drivers to operate cell phones in a responsible manner has little if any effect on the driver distraction problem. Exhortations to act in a safe manner, rather than a careless and reckless manner, are so general and ambiguous as to be meaningless. The questions might be: exercise care about what hazard? What avoidance behavior is required? And what protective devices are recommended?

In essence, design provides a more permanent product or system improvement, safeguards can help but may be removed, overcome, or they may add other problems, warnings are reserved for a last-resort attempt to reduce risks, instructions are transitory and often overlooked, and safe use may serve liability avoidance purposes, but is generally ineffective because it is so vague, equivocal, obscure as to the real causation of a safety problem, and capable of being ignored. This prioritization rule and its exceptions will be found in applications throughout this book.

(3) The significant trilogy

One productive method of conceptualizing an approach to safety analysis is to think in terms of a hazard–risk–danger trilogy. The procedure starts with the identification of hazards. A hazard is that which could possibly cause harm. The hazard is then evaluated in terms of risk. Risk is the amount or severity of harm that could be caused by each hazard. The risk is then categorized as to whether or not it exceeds some established criterion as to the acceptability of the risk. This decision-making relates to the danger posed by the risk that is presented by the hazard. If a danger exists then there is an unsafe condition in the process or defect in the product. One illustrative definition of a danger is excessive preventable risk.

The objective of this approach is first to locate, then to take action to prevent or eliminate the hazard. If that is not possible, find a means to reduce the risk to a level that would be acceptable. Any appreciable remaining risk should be communicated to those who might be exposed so that they can take action to evade or mitigate the risk.

It is generally believed, in this approach, that design changes are of paramount importance, that add-on safeguards are less effective, and only as a last resort should there be special training requirements, instructions for use, or warnings.

This approach also gives priority to preventive action (preventing the problem before sale or use) rather than corrective action (attempting to correct problems after sale or during use). For further information see Chapters 3 and 5.

(4) Cause and effect

One of the most debilitating and misleading concepts is that there is only one cause of most accidents, a widely held belief. Parsimony in explanations is desirable. Moral judgment may be commendable. But quick blame provides little help in the search for effective preventive remedies, whether it is a proactive or corrective search for causation or cause and effect. An open mind is essential during the fact-finding stage of an accident investigation, since hidden causes often appear during accident reconstruction, and a substantial factor in preventing repeat accidents may be discovered only by which remedies are acceptable, capable of being implemented, and serve actually to reduce injuries and deaths. This book tends to emphasize the benefits of the rule of multiple causation. This means that there may be several causes that could produce an undesirable effect. All causes may need treatment or only one. One or all causes may be cured. Also, any one, or all, could result in a collateral improvement in the desired level of non-safety performance.

(5) Immediate objectives

There are certain key concepts that, if well understood and properly exploited, could play a substantial role in properly developing safety plans and achieving safety goals. During implementation of those plans and seeking appropriate applications for the techniques and ‘tools’ of the specialty, they provide theoretical or overall guidance for enhancing safety where there might be ambiguous specific requirements. These are important concepts that, if appropriately comprehended at an early stage, provide a platform for fully understanding the purposes and objectives of all the subsequent applications. They can furnish the derivative immediate objectives that can facilitate appropriate comprehension of what needs to be done and to help to avoid misunderstanding and the use of ineffective remedies. For example, the concept of informed consent can illuminate the proper pathway for an effective communications program. This is essential if other people may reasonably assume, trust, or rely upon the premise that there has been appropriate disclosure of all significant health and safety risks that might endanger them.

The concepts relating to an expectations test for customer satisfaction and an acceptable risk level are fundamental to appropriate safety plans and activities. The concept of preventable and correctable human error avoids superficial and meaningless remedies. The concept of visualization is key to understanding the mental processes important for accident prevention. The hazard–risk–danger rule is an excellent example cited by many specialists, that, when actually understood, helps greatly in safety analysis problem-solving. In this book, there are many such key concepts that can provide or infer immediate safety objectives. Such concepts do require special attention, repeated reading, thoughtful consideration, and some experimentation to find what works best in a particular situation with special needs.

(6) Justifiable reliance on conclusions

Each technical, engineering, or scientific discipline has its own version of the best scientific process, what is appropriate experimentation or testing, what is good peer review or sufficient general acceptance, and what constitutes adequate verification or validation. Each discipline or occupation has its own version of a utilitarian goal and a social value system. The essence of it all may be achieving the truth through repetition or providing an adequate objective basis so others can avoid a possible detrimental reliance. Stated another way, a factual foundation for action is preferable to speculative assumption...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Automotive vehicle safety
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Disclaimer
• 1: Introduction to vehicle safety
• 2: Basic concepts of vehicle safety
• 3: Risk evaluation: is it unsafe?
• 4: Human error control
• 5: Risk communication
• 6: Universal design
• 7: The distracted driver
• 8: Occupant injury protection: biokinetics
• 9: Human simulation applications
• 10: Crash testing
• 11: Accident reconstruction
• 12: Special design problems
• 13: Future vehicle safety
• 14: Discussion questions
• 15: References and recommended reading