MANUFACTURERS
FORD
16


Hidden assets


As head of passive safety at Ford, Joerg Reim is responsible for the less obvious design features that often turn out to be the life-savers


Joerg Reim

“If people in a car are not using seatbelts, then secondary safety features are of a lesser advantage”
Vehicle safety starts on the drawing board when the design lines of a new model are being sketched and is far more detailed than whether a car should have ABS brakes as standard or how many airbags should be fitted.

As well as the safety features detailed in a new model brochure, “hidden” safety initiatives are design essentials built into a vehicle, such as energy absorption measures and the construction of space below the bonnet to improve occupant and pedestrian safety in the event of a crash.

Therefore, in the case of an all-new model, safety elements of a vehicle are being worked on up to four years before the vehicle reaches production and around two-and-a-half-years in the case of a model update.

“When we are designing new vehicles we are talking about the stringent implementation and development of safety features which includes testing and development with computer engineering methods from A-Z,” says Ford safety expert Joerg Reim.

“The structure of a vehicle plays a very important role in overall safety – not too stiff and not too soft. We have to find the balance between stiffness and softness. An accident occurs in the blink of an eye – 200,000th of a second. When your eye blinks the accident is over and within that amount of time the vehicle structure and the secondary systems need to work together to provide optimum protection.

“We have to manage the forward movement and protection of occupants and other road users within one metre. Therefore, development is focused on the chassis and engine of a vehicle. The smaller the engine, for example, the greater protection because there is more space. We are also developing breakaway chassis technology. Customers don’t see all the safety features incorporated into vehicles.

“There is significant work under the skin of a vehicle that contributes to the integrity of vehicles in the event of a collision.”

Reim is Ford of Europe’s supervisor vehicle safety, body engineering product development Europe, based in Cologne, and is responsible for vehicle safety and crash development from the first design lines until certification.

There are two categories of vehicle safety – passive and active. Reim is responsible for passive safety, which covers features designed to protect in the event of an accident, such as seatbelts, airbags, vehicle structure and rescuability – all part of Ford’s unique Intelligent Protection System (IPS) pioneered on the Mondeo.

Meanwhile, active safety embraces features designed to aid drivers in the avoidance of an accident such as brakes, lights, vehicle visibility and more recent features such as Electronic Stability Programme (ESP), Electronic Brake Force Distribution (EBFD) and Emergency Brake Assist (EBA).

Despite the amount of time and money spent on building safety features into the design of a vehicle, Reim classes a near 50-year-old invention as the most important.

“The seatbelt is the most important safety feature,” he argues. “If people in a car are not using seatbelts, then secondary safety features are of a lesser advantage.” From the launch of the lap belt developments have seen the introduction of a three-point seatbelt, inertia reel belts, load-limiters on belts and the addition of seatbelt pretensioners.

However, seatbelt developments continue apace with Reim saying: “The next development will be seatbelts with double pretensioners to keep occupants tighter to the seat in the event of an accident.

“We want to ‘tie’ the occupant to the seat and the body structure so there is relatively little movement of the person inside the passenger compartment.”

Other developments are focusing around four-point belts, padded belts to protect the upper torso and in the future could include harness-style belts as used by racing drivers.

The widespread introduction of airbags in the 1990s has contributed significantly to the reduction of serious injuries, with Reim believing that the introduction of curtain airbags was one of the key developments, as their launch has specifically reduced the number of head injuries.

He says: “There are more frontal impacts than side impacts, but more people are killed or seriously injured as a result of side impacts. Therefore, today, protecting the driver and passengers from side impacts is more important as they are already very well protected in the event of a frontal impact.”

The inflation rates of airbags can already be tailored to the severity of the impact and future developments could see the fitting of knee and foot airbags as standard. For rear seat passengers they would be incorporated in the backs of the front seats.

Ford is also looking at the development of so-called “out-of-position airbags”. Reim explains: “Passengers may not be sitting in the optimum position when an accident occurs so while an airbag will inflate, it may not offer maximum protection. We are, therefore, incorporating airbags which are ‘out-of-position-friendly’ into vehicles.”

Experts believe that building safety into a car is about building space into a vehicle. While Reim explains how that is being achieved under the bonnet with, for example, smaller engines, it is also being achieved inside vehicles through the development of anti-submarining seats, steering wheel retraction and pedals moving away from the driver in an accident.

“If we can build more space into the occupant compartment we can reduce the severity of injuries. Initially we looked at reducing head and chest injuries because invariably they are the most life threatening,” he says.

“Now we have the technology to protect the head and chest we have moved on to other areas such as protecting the legs of drivers and passengers by reducing intrusions into the passenger compartment in a collision.” Longer term, Reim believes the focus will switch from the launch of new passive safety features to active safety features.


The Ford Mondeo
“The widespread introduction of airbags in the 1990s has contributed significantly to the reduction of serious injuries”
“We have achieved a high level of performance with respect to passive safety. Therefore, I think significant new developments will focus around active safety and particularly the early warning of danger,” he says. Such developments will include the availability of so-called driveby- wire technology and sensors in the front of vehicles warning of the rapid approach of an obstacle.

The launch of the European New Car Assessment Programme in the late 1990s has done much to focus the public on the protection offered to drivers, passengers and pedestrians in the event of an accident.

However, Ford, just like other manufacturers, completes its own significant crash test programme before a vehicle is launched. The Euro NCAP test covers frontal, side and pedestrian impacts, while Ford has many more in-house crash tests.

Reim says: “Euro NCAP is important to us, but it is not the only test. Manufacturers can influence safety, but so can other road users, governments and local authorities through signage and road design improvements.


“We are working on a lot of technical innovations to improve vehicle safety from the point of view of drivers, passengers, pedestrians and other road users. There are many issues which contribute to road safety and there continues to be room for improvement.”


<<back to contents page