Pedestrian protection
The European Commission introduced the directive 2003/102/EC "relating to the protection of pedestrians and other vulnerable road users before and in the event of a collision with a motor vehicle".
Pedestrians do not have a crumple zone, therefore vehicles should absorb the impact energy in the future meaning the vehicle front must become “soft” enough to protect pedestrians from serious injuries.
The pedestrian-friendly headlamp
Dependent on the vehicle category and the front design, the headlamps are located in or near the impact region of the upper leg, the child head or the lower leg impactors.
On one hand, headlamps must absorb the impact energy in a defined way along with the surrounding components, while load peaks caused by internal collisions have to be avoided.
On the other hand, headlamps should not cause additional injuries which may result from splinters.
Pedestrian protection testing applications
Automotive Lighting owns a drop tower to make important preliminary investigations with complete headlamps.
Component tests with various impactors can be carried out whereas crashes themselves can also be simulated with existing CAD data on a computer.
As “pedestrian protection” goes beyond headlamps, Automotive Lighting furthermore does research in cooperation with external institutes and European vehicle manufacturers in order to receive optimum results.
