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Recent studies in the USA show 2800 passenger casualties/year, due to automobiles and light vehicles impacting against the front structure of medium and heavy trucks at speeds over 45 mph. This same driver or passenger leaves the vehicle and becomes a pedestrian. What is being done in the automotive industry to face this situation? What improvements can be expected in automobiles, trucks and buses in the XXI century? The results obtained in this work show that it is possible and very important for new projects and modernization of commercial vehicles (trucks and buses) to introduce a front bumper concept foreseeing the Passive Safety of third parties (passenger vehicles).

Rear underride crashes kill thousands of people yearly worldwide. Underride guards did not follow the progress achieved by the automotive safety technology. Searching for solutions to this problem, two new guards have been designed and three crash tests carried out. A new articulated, an energy absorbing conceptual guard and a guard constructed according to the European (ECE-R58) regulation were tested. Both the new guards could avoid underride, the ECE-R58 one could not. The tests pointed out that the new articulated guard could be used after a few modifications and the conceptual one needs further optimization to become commercially feasible.