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The Advanced Crash Avoidance Technologies (ACAT) program initiated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had two major overall objectives. These were to develop a standardized Safety Impact Methodology (SIM) tool to evaluate the effectiveness of advanced technologies in avoiding and mitigating specific types of vehicle crashes; and to develop and demonstrate objective tests that are used in the SIM to verify the safety impact of a real system. Honda and Dynamic Research Inc. (DRI) had been developing and applying such SIMs for several years and had a Cooperative Agreement with NHTSA to further develop a SIM in order to determine the feasibility of developing estimates of effectiveness for specific not-yet-deployed safety technologies in the absence of data from real world or field operational tests, and linking it to the results from objective tests.

This paper reports on the interim progress of the Honda-DRI ACAT-II program initiated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The objectives of the ACAT-II program were further development of a formalized Safety Impact Methodology (SIM) for estimating the capability of advanced technology applications installed in vehicles to address specific types of motor vehicle crashes, and to evaluate driver acceptance of the technologies. This particular ACAT study extended earlier work by Honda and DRI in the NHTSA ACAT-I program by extending the SIM so as to be able to analyze head-on crashes more completely, and by using the extended SIM to evaluate of a pre-production version of a Honda Head-on Crash Avoidance Assist System (HCAAS).

Results of a study are described in which driver subjective over-the-road noise discomfort ratings and objective measurements were collected and correlated for 10 driver subjects and an experimental matrix of test vehicles, transient road specimens, and repeated runs. Objective noise measurements included various time varying psychoacoustic Loudness and Sharpness metrics and Sound Pressure Level measurements. Results indicate that driver over-the-road noise discomfort is most strongly correlated with changes in the sound magnitude, for which Fast A-weighted SPL is almost as good a metric as Zwicker's Loudness, and to some extent is also correlated with the absolute sound level. Results also suggest that the change in the Aures' Sharpness of the sound and passenger car motion and vibration may also contribute to noise discomfort.

A class of driver attentional workload metrics has been developed for possible application to the measuring and monitoring of attentional workload and level of distraction in actual driving, as well as in the evaluation and comparison of in-vehicle human machine interface (HMI or DVI) devices. The metrics include driver/vehicle response and performance measures, driver control activity, and driver control models and parameters. They are the result of a multidisciplinary, experimental and analytical effort, applying control theory, manual control, and human factors principles and practices. Driving simulator and over-the-road experiments were used to develop, confirm, and demonstrate the use of the metrics in distracted driving situations. The visual-manual secondary tasks used in the study included navigation destination entry, radio tuning, critical tracking task, and a generic touch screen entry task.

An updated evaluation of the effects on predicted injuries of an example crush protective device (CPD) proposed for application to All-Terrain Vehicles (ATVs) is described. As in previous evaluations, this involved extending and applying the test and analysis methods defined in ISO 13232 (2005) for motorcycle impacts, to evaluate the effects of the example CPD in a sample of simulated ATV overturn events. Updated modeling refinements included lowering the energy levels of the simulated overturn events; accounting for potential mechanical/ traumatic (compressive) asphyxia mechanisms; refining and calibrating the force-deflection characteristics of helmet, head, legs and soil so as to reduce potential over-prediction of head and leg injuries; and calibrating the simulation against aggregated injury distributions from actual accidents.

The Advanced Crash Avoidance Technologies (ACAT) program initiated by the National Highway Safety Administration had two major objectives. These were to develop a standardized Safety Impact Methodology (SIM) tool to evaluate the effectiveness of advanced technologies in avoiding and mitigating specific types of vehicle crashes; and to develop and demonstrate objective tests that are used in the SIM to verify the safety impact of a real system. Honda and Dynamic Research Inc. (DRI) have been developing and applying such SIMs for several years and have a Cooperative Agreement with NHTSA to further develop a SIM that provides an estimate of full systems safety benefits at a national level.