Techniques and principles for evaluating and comparing various crash sensor concepts are discussed. The trade-off criteria include: crash/rough-road discrimination, target lethality, component reliability, zone of protection, environmental susceptibility, and other criteria. Within the context of hardware performance characteristics, currently prominent devices are described including: inertial mass, spring mass, piezoelectric and piezoresistive accelerometers, radar, sonar, and laser predictive sensors, and bumper mounted detectors. An example of the assessment method is presented, comparing an inertial mass and a spring mass detector.
