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The structural design of current vehicle front units has to account for an increasing number of constraints: improvement of real-world performance in safety for occupants and others road users, perform in the various ratings and meet future regulations. Therefore the structural car design is the result of a compromise between pedestrian protection, car-to-car compatibility and self- protection. In addition to these safety considerations, reparability constraints are becoming more and more demanding and intrusive toward the other safety requirements. The need to reduce emissions through fuel consumption control requires a reduction of the overall body weight which leads usually to more difficulties to achieve a correct structural behavior. Some of these constraints lead to solutions which are in opposition and in general to unsatisfactory compromises. It is suggested to develop a more comprehensive approach in order to better take into account both safety requirements and reparability.

Accident studies show that incompatibility has become the main cause of fatal injury in car-to-car accidents. There is a general agreement today that improving compatibility is one of the most effective ways to reduce the number of road accident victims. Therefore, structural car design must take into account other road users without decreasing self-protection level supplied by all new passenger cars. In addition to these safety considerations, the front unit structural design has to account for an increasing number of constraints: improvement of real-world performance in safety, fulfill current and future regulations like "CAFÉ" or pedestrian, reducing utilization costs and so on. Furthermore, European fleet is changing in mass and in size, as the world's ones, and new fashion vehicles appear different than the previous one.

After a lot of researches in the field of compatibility through testing and accident analysis, the current knowledge allows us to propose a new test protocol able to control the two issues of compatibility: partner and self protection. In other words, the procedure would be able to assess the most relevant parameters: structural interaction (geometry / stiffness) and compartment strength (stiffness). The most effective way to meet this target is to control both of them at the same time, thus avoiding many test regulations. The new final protocol will be a mix of two very well known test configurations: current frontal regulation in Europe (ECE 94) to assess compartment strength and structural integrity through vehicle and dummy criteria Progressive Deformable Barrier test (PDB) to assess and control force distribution through barrier deformation.