1 Bendall Avenue Engineering Supplement 50 Design for pedestrian impact Review of the political, quasi political and quasi legislative environment of vehicle modification. There are many approaches that can be taken to the issue of road safety. The one that is being adopted currently in South Australia is a "system of systems" approach. Alternative approaches such as risk management or all of life risk balance are available as models but the system of systems approach is the one being adopted at the level of legislative and executive government in South Australia in 2015. This approach has its cognitive base in Sweden and the Netherlands and is goes under the slogan "towards zero". By this is meant a system to bring about zero road accident related deaths per year -- a reduction from say 5 to zero deaths per 100,000 population per year. The feasiblity, probability of success, and reality of such a program are not negotiable. The towards zero strategy targets: 1) the design of and access to roads, 2) setting of speed limits and control of speeds, 3) design of vehicles to absorb the energy of crashes and protect occupants 4) training, assessment and cultural milieu of drivers and control of access to licences. The management of these targets relies upon perfect knowledge existing for road design, speed limit setting, vehicle design and skill assessment and towards those parameters standards and assessment guides exist in all facets of the targets. For the vehicle modification process to continue to have the support of members of parliament and the executive arm of government, it is necessary to be able to demonstrate that each modification results in improvement in all aspects of safety. The formal definition of safety has been expanded to include primary safety relating to driver control and vehicle response, secondary safety of occupant protection in a crash, envirnonmental safety with respect to noise and emissions and safety from theft. The architects of "Towards Zero" accept that crashes are inevitable but aim to contain the forces of human body impact to within survivable limits. There is a pervasive belief among some that only vehicles with the latest and future electronic control devices and approaches to design can be compatible with Towards Zero vision and that a revised culture of vehicle ownership needs to be indoctrinated within the community. This author disputes implications that older vehicles cannot be made compatible with the Towards Zero ambition. At the same time the author considers Towards Zero to be a fiction but recogises it as a political imposition. This annexure records the process of the arrival at recommendations.
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Australian Technology Pty Ltd A.C.N. 008 126 350 1 Bendall Avenue Annexure 2 Please note: Every design engineer seeks to reduce risk. The issue is "how?" In 2012, Dr Robert Anderson of the South Australian Centre for Automotive Safety Research wrote, "the general lack of under-representation of specific safety features in the crashed vehicle sample is intriguing, as the results do tend to suggest that many vehicle safety systems have not been associated with wholesale changes to the rate of serious injury crashes (broadly defined)." Post 2010 added by WDRP
1 Bendall Avenue Annexure 3 Please note: The fatality rate has risen since 2012. (WDRP)
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1 Bendall Avenue Annexure 5 Abreviated injury scale AIS 3: 8-10% risk of death Please note: 50% of pedestrians striking a bonnetted vehicle at 40 km/h are likely to die.
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1 Bendall Avenue Annexure 9 Wrap around distance 2105 mm Conclusion: Without the external gauges, the vehicle is unambigously safer in every respect than it was in 1974 at first manufacture. Although the risk of the hobby vehicle producing actual pedestrian harm is extremely low, it is the author's recommendation that the principles of Towards Zero be adopted and the gauges removed. By so doing, the modified vehicle can be championed as being consistent with Towards Zero. Conclusion: Without the gauges, the bonnet and cowl panel offer no protrusion. The wrap around distance is measured from the ground to the POINT of head impact. Although the instrument are ahead of the wrap around distance, they still cause head impact and in relative motion between head and impact point would magnify injury.
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1 Bendall Avenue Annexure 11 South Australia 5034 A remedy the preserves the head up Date: 20/01/2016 view of the gauges The concept of "heads up" instrument placing is valid and enables drivers to less often divert attention from the road ahead. The zone in front of the steering wheel is not considered as being within the head impact area.. In the author's opinion the gauges should be moved inboard of the windscreen. Conclusion: The steering wheel protects the gauges that are in the heads up region when they are relocated to the inside of the cabin.
1 Bendall Avenue Annexure 12 In order to retain the exterior gauge nascelles, it is possible to fit a reverse bonnet scoop that protects a pedestrian from head contact with irregular shaped protrusions. In this arrangement the aggregated deformation of the scoop, the nascelle, the bonnet and the cowl panel give the pedestrian greater than original protection.