SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE MEASURES OF VEHICLE HANDLING - DRIVERS AND EXPERIMENTS

Recognising the need for improved understanding of links between subje ctive and objective measures of vehicle handling an extensive program of instrumented testing and driver evaluation was conducted with a vie w to correlating results from the different sets of data. The results suggested that each of eight test drivers tended to formulate ratings for specific handling questions in a unique manner which made it diffi cult to associate specific response metrics with particular aspects of handling. However it was noted that when a vehicle response did influ ence a driver's rating its effect on the ratings was largely the same regardless of the specific rating question being asked. By suitable av eraging of these results it was possible to quantify the general effec t on ratings that a given vehicle response parameter has. Those metric s with an always positive or always negative effect could potentially be utilised by engineers to build in favourable handling characteristi cs in the early stages of design then as the basis for trouble-shootin g problems which arise in the later stages of vehicle development.