Automotive safety

Automotive safety is the study and practice of automotive design, construction, equipment and regulation to minimize the occurrence and consequences of traffic collisions involving motor vehicles. Road traffic safety more broadly includes roadway design.
One of the first formal academic studies into improving motor vehicle safety was by Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory of Buffalo, New York. The main conclusion of their extensive report is the crucial importance of seat belts and padded dashboards. However, the primary vector of traffic-related deaths and injuries is the disproportionate mass and velocity of an automobile compared to that of the predominant victim, the pedestrian.
According to the World Health Organization, 80% of cars sold in the world are not compliant with main safety standards. Only 40 countries have adopted the full set of the seven most important regulations for car safety.
In the United States, a pedestrian is injured by a motor vehicle every 8 minutes, and are 1.5 times more likely than a vehicle's occupants to be killed in a motor vehicle crash per outing.
Improvements in roadway and motor vehicle designs have steadily reduced injury and death rates in all first world countries. Nevertheless, auto collisions are the leading cause of injury-related deaths, an estimated total of 1.2 million in 2004, or 25% of the total from all causes. Of those killed by autos, nearly two-thirds are pedestrians. Risk compensation theory has been used in arguments against safety devices, regulations and modifications of vehicles despite the efficacy of saving lives.
Coalitions to promote road and automotive safety, such as Together for Safer Roads, brings together global private sector companies, across industries, to collaborate on improving road safety. TSR brings together members' knowledge, data, technology, and global networks to focus on five road safety areas that will make an impact globally and within local communities.
The rising trend of autonomous things is largely driven by the move towards the autonomous car, that both addresses the main existing safety issues and creates new issues. The autonomous car is expected to be safer than existing vehicles, by eliminating the single most dangerous element - the driver. The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School claims that "Some ninety percent of motor vehicle crashes are caused at least in part by human error". But while safety standards like the ISO 26262 specify the required safety, it is still a burden on the industry to demonstrate acceptable safety.

Occupational driving

Work-related roadway crashes are the leading cause of death from traumatic injuries in the U.S. workplace. They accounted for nearly 12,000 deaths between 1992 and 2000. Deaths and injuries from these roadway crashes result in increased costs to employers and lost productivity in addition to their toll in human suffering. Truck drivers tend to endure higher fatality rates than workers in other occupations, but concerns about motor vehicle safety in the workplace are not limited to those surrounding the operation of large trucks. Workers outside the motor carrier industry routinely operate company-owned vehicles for deliveries, sales and repair calls, client visits, etc. In these instances, the employer providing the vehicle generally plays a major role in setting safety, maintenance, and training policy. As in non-occupational driving, young drivers are especially at risk. In the workplace, 45% of all fatal injuries to workers under age 18 between 1992 and 2000 in the United States resulted from transportation incidents.

Active and passive safety

The terms "active" and "passive" are simple but important terms in the world of automotive safety. "Active safety" is used to refer to technology assisting in the prevention of a crash and "passive safety" to components of the vehicle that help to protect occupants during a crash.

Crash avoidance

Crash avoidance systems and devices help the driver — and, increasingly, help the vehicle itself — to avoid a collision. This category includes:

The vehicle's headlamps, reflectors, and other lights and signals
The vehicle's mirrors
The vehicle's brakes, steering, and suspension systems
Driver assistance

A subset of crash avoidance is driver assistance systems, which help the driver to detect obstacles and to control the vehicle. Driver assistance systems include:

Driver Alertness Detection System to help prevent crashes caused by fatigue, lack of alertness, or distractions
Advanced emergency braking system systems to prevent or reduce the severity of collision.
Infrared night vision systems to increase seeing distance beyond headlamp range
Adaptive headlamps control the direction and range of the headlight beams to light the driver's way through curves and maximize seeing distance without partially blinding other drivers
Reverse backup sensors, which alert drivers to difficult-to-see objects in their path when reversing
Backup camera
Adaptive cruise control which maintains a safe distance from the vehicle in front
Lane departure warning systems to alert the driver of an unintended departure from the intended lane of travel
Tire pressure monitoring systems or Deflation Detection Systems
Traction control systems which restore traction if driven wheels begin to spin
Electronic Stability Control, which intervenes to avert an impending loss of control
Anti-lock braking systems
Electronic brakeforce distribution systems
Emergency brake assist systems
Cornering Brake Control systems
Assured Clear Distance Ahead measurement and speed governance systems
Precrash system
Automated parking system
Obstacle detection sensor systems notify a driver how close their vehicle is to an object - usually providing a distance measurement, to the inch, as to how close they are.
Crashworthiness

systems and devices prevent or reduce the severity of injuries when a crash is imminent or actually happening. Much research is carried out using anthropomorphic crash test dummies.

Seatbelts limit the forward motion of an occupant, stretch to absorb energy, to lengthen the time of the occupant's negative acceleration in a crash, reducing the loading on the occupants' body. They prevent occupants being ejected from the vehicle and ensure that they are in the correct position for the operation of the airbags.
Airbags inflate to cushion the impact of a vehicle occupant with various parts of the vehicle's interior. The most important being the prevention of direct impact of the driver's head with the steering wheel and door pillar.
Laminated windshields remain in one piece when impacted, preventing penetration of unbelted occupants' heads and maintaining a minimal but adequate transparency for control of the car immediately following a collision. It is also a bonded structural part of the safety cell. Tempered glass side and rear windows break into granules with minimally sharp edges, rather than splintering into jagged fragments as ordinary glass does.
Crumple zones absorb and dissipate the force of a collision, displacing and diverting it away from the passenger compartment and reducing the negative acceleration impact force on the vehicle occupants. Vehicles will include a front, rear and maybe side crumple zones too.
Safety Cell—the passenger compartment is reinforced with high strength materials, at places subject to high loads in a crash, in order to maintain a survival space for the vehicle occupants. Footwell intrusion is one recognized failure mode of the safety cell, and anti-intrusion bars are one component addressing protection in side impacts.
Collapsible universally jointed steering columns, along with steering wheel airbag. The steering system is mounted behind the front axle - behind and protected by, the front crumple zone. This reduces the risk and severity of driver impact or even impalement on the column in a frontal crash.
Pedestrian protection systems.
Padding of the instrument panel and other interior parts, on the vehicle in areas likely to be struck by the occupants during a crash, and the careful placement of mounting brackets away from those areas.
Cargo barriers are sometimes fitted to provide a physical barrier between passenger and cargo compartments in vehicles such as SUVs, station wagons and vans. These help prevent injuries caused by occupants being struck by unsecured cargo. They can also help prevent collapse of the roof in the event of a vehicle rollover.
Post-crash survivability

Post-crash survivability is the chance that drivers and passengers survive a crash after it occurs. Technology such as Advanced Automatic Collision Notification can automatically place calls to emergency services and send information about a vehicle collision.

Pedestrian safety

Cars are much more dangerous to pedestrians than they are to drivers and passengers. Two-thirds of 1.3 million yearly auto related deaths are pedestrians. Since at least the early 1970s, attention has also been given to vehicle design regarding the safety of pedestrians in car-pedestrian collisions. Proposals in Europe would require cars sold there to have a minimum/maximum hood height. From 2006, the use of "bull bars", a fashion on 4x4s and SUVs, became illegal in the European Union, after having been banned on all new cars in 2002.

Conspicuity

Lights and reflectors

Vehicles are equipped with a variety of lights and reflectors to mark their presence, position, width, length, and direction of travel as well as to convey the driver's intent and actions to other drivers. These include the vehicle's headlamps, front and rear position lamps, side marker lights and reflectors, turn signals, stop lamps, and reversing lamps. School buses and semi-trailer trucks in North America are required to bear retroreflective strips outlining their side and rear perimeters for greater conspicuity at night.
Daytime running lamps have been required in the Nordic countries since the mid-1970s, in Canada since 1990, and throughout the European Union since 7 February 2011.