[TusharK]

ZF has developed the world's first pre-crash external side airbag system. Earlier this week, the company gave a live demonstration of the new technology in Memmingen, Germany.



According to ZF, the pre-crash safety system uses an external airbag that can deploy in milliseconds before a collision. It provides an additional lateral crumple zone that is claimed to reduce the severity of injury by up to 40%. In case of a T-bone type scenario, the system is claimed to reduce the penetration of the intruding vehicle by up to 30%.



The airbag is integrated into the vehicle's sensor systems and specially developed algorithms help the system decide whether or not to deploy the airbag. The airbag has a capacity of 280-400 litres depending on the vehicle. It expands upwards from the side sills to form a crumple zone between the A and C pillars.

Link to Team-BHP News

[sudev]

The pictures don't seem to be from real car collision but testing inflatable car like object...or am I missing some thing in this?

[rahulskumar]

We need this as a accessory item to protect our vehicles while driving inside cities
It might work in Europe or US where driving is disciplined and we keep some distance between vehicles. For Indian driving standards, this must be enabled only after a minimum speed threshold (means we are driving on highway)

[SoumenD]

Originally Posted by rahulskumar

It might work in Europe or US where driving is disciplined and we keep some distance between vehicles. For Indian driving standards, this must be enabled only after a minimum speed threshold (means we are driving on highway)

Agreed, else with the kind of traffic we have wherein gap between each car at times is in centimetres, our cars would look like hovercrafts floating on roads with balloons all around

[Iyencar]

Wow! This is one of those things that makes you wonder why someone didn't develop it earlier First Volvo's cyclist safety feature and now this. The Europeans are leading the way here. Meanwhile, Maruti will introduce this in the year 3030 in their flagship model's zxi (O) variant which of course dealers won't have stock of.

[arbaz906]

Here's the video of the test. Has a great slow motion shot at the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=059pp2YHaeY

It is indeed an inflatable car colliding on to it. However, a proper car on car t-bone will indicate it's effectiveness in the real world.
Also looking at the airbag area and position, I feel it won't be as effective when the crashing vehicle is a tall SUV (say a Fortuner for example)

[ChiragM]

Safety has come a long way indeed.

I am curious to know how the sensors for this side airbag works. Wonder if it deploys when it detects a vehicle nearby or if it senses a vehicle approaching. Nevertheless, I do agree that for Indian conditions, it should be made a little less sensitive, although it will take sometime for this to reach production cars, especially in India.

Need to see a crash test video showing the deformation to see the actual impact of this airbag.

[GeneralJazz]

Originally Posted by sudev

The pictures don't seem to be from real car collision but testing inflatable car like object...or am I missing some thing in this?

Since its just a demo, there is no point in wrecking a car for it. As its a pre-crash technology, no impact sensors come into play. So mostly it is based on input from some visual/radar/ultra sound sensors. For that a dummy inflatable car is more than enough. There are similar demos for automatic emergency braking (from Volvo I guess) which uses a similar dummy car.

Originally Posted by rahulskumar

We need this as a accessory item to protect our vehicles while driving inside cities

We have a similar technology here in India. We've had it for a long time actually! And its way more advanced than all these sensor based gimmicks which are prone to fail! Our Indian tech can even be fitted on any type of vehicle and needs absolutely no electronics or sensors or such things! Its called the Front and Back Advanced Collision Mitigation and Impact Reduction System, aka, the Bull Bar!





Source: Google

[sudev]

I disagree that using them is more than enough. When a full car lights from the side impact and physics are totally different because of the carried momentum. while in the initial stages balloon dummy is good enough for checking the efficacy of the sensor triggers in the long run we have to have a full car crashing into the test vehicle to check the efficacy of such airbags. the query is will they be able to absorb the impact and where will the absorb energy dissipate?