24 Jun 2004 ID: 206
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Honda's Position on Pedestrian Protection Jun 2004

HONDA’s SAFETY APPROACH

1. Honda's safety philosophy is to PROTECT THE WEAKEST.

2. To achieve this, Honda focuses not only on the protection of car occupants, including children, but also on vulnerable road users, including pedestrians, cyclists, motorcycle and moped riders.

3. For Honda the only way to understand different accident modes such as car-to-car, car-to-motorcycle and car-to-pedestrian, is to do fundamental research in these complex crashworthiness areas.

4. This research led Honda to acknowledge the need to use special and new (research) tools, which culminated in the Honda Tochigi crash test centre that was opened in March 2000 in Japan.

5. Honda's own G-FORCE CONTROL TECHNOLOGY, introduced in 1998, brings the crash safety performance of Honda cars to the highest standards in the world. This G-Force control technology was complemented to also protect vulnerable road users: cyclists, motorcyclists and pedestrians.


HONDA’s APPROACH FOR PEDESTRIAN PROTECTION

6. Honda acknowledges that pedestrian safety is a key safety area with potential room for improvements.

7. In 1988 Honda started its own research on pedestrian safety using data from accident research, computer simulations, and self-developed tools (including a unique “POLAR II” pedestrian full size crash dummy).

8. In 1998, Honda developed the first series of countermeasures to lower pedestrian fatalities and injuries and introduced the PEDESTRIAN HEAD INJURY-REDUCING SAFETY BODY in the HR-V model.


THE HONDA EUROPEAN RANGE OF CARS

9. The next challenge was to build cars in which the extended G-Force technology was implemented, creating maximum protection for the car occupants and at the same time for other road users, such as pedestrians.

10. A primary design objective for the new Honda European range was to be among the best in class for front and side impact protection as well as to achieve top of class pedestrian safety-performance in both the previous and the new more stringent testing protocols.

11. The Honda Jazz, Civic, Stream and CR-V provide impressively improved pedestrian protection performance for all important areas of primary concern: child head, adult head, upper leg and lower leg.

12. These new cars were not designed with any possible (future) legislation in mind: the improvements made are based on Honda’s own analysis and research in the field of pedestrian safety, keeping in mind our concern to protect the weakest on the road.

13. The Jazz, Civic, Stream and CR-V fit perfectly into Honda's philosophy of protecting vulnerable road users and Honda's commitment to save lives throughout the world with its new technology.


THE FUTURE

14. Honda has always been very open about its own research aimed at improving pedestrian protection. This is demonstrated by numerous technical papers (for example at the 1998 and 2001 ESV conferences) and press releases.

15. Honda is gradually introducing the countermeasures to its European range, with the Jazz, Civic, Stream and CR-V setting the benchmark in pedestrian safety as leaders in their vehicle classification.

16. What further improvements Honda will make to its cars in terms of pedestrian friendliness, will also depend on the outcome of the debates about legislating pedestrian protection requirements.

17. Honda has achieved this new level of pedestrian protection performance with currently available technology. To take the pedestrian protection performance substantially further, new directions may have to be chosen.


CONCLUSION

18. THROUGH ITS OWN RESEARCH, HONDA HAS ESTABLISHED A POSITION OF EXPERTISE IN THE CRITICAL AREA OF PEDESTRIAN SAFETY.
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