Innovations in auto safety design, a key to quality improvement

As the public becomes increasingly aware that safety is a health-related is sue, more stringent requirements have now been placed on manufacturers' pro ducts so as to limit injuries to people from these products. Therefore, a p roduct's quality is now no longer measured solely in terms of aesthetic, co mfort, and durability, but increasingly, in terms of its injury mitigating features. In the Auto Industry for example, safety has become the major fac tor driving the design of new vehicles. Innovative safety concepts are cont inuously sought after and evolved by safety engineers to forestall crash (c rash avoidance design concepts), reduce injury when crash does occur (vehic le crashworthiness), and to protect occupants and pedestrians from flames a nd other hazards after crash (postcrash protection design concepts). The ob jective of this paper is to provide a perspective of the evolution of autom otive safety in the United States and also take a peek at global future tre nds. In addition, this paper shows how innovative safety concepts are not o nly shaping vehicle design but also changing the rigid definition of vehicl e quality. Practical examples of evolutions of innovative safety concepts t hrough the processes of Inventive Engineering are presented in the area of vehicle crash engineering. Concepts constraints are briefly reviewed as rel ated to their design contradictions to comfort quality and safety quality. The focus is on Head Injury Criterion (HIC) and Dynamic Side Impact (DSI) r egulatory requirements. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc.