In Europe alone, more than 10,000 pedestrians and other vulnerable road users are killed every year when struck by a motor vehicle. The EU has therefore introduced regulations on pedestrian protection and proposed even stricter rules by 2012. In response, Autoliv showed a “pop-up hood” in 2001 that protects the heads of pedestrians by using airbag technologies to enable the hood to flex. Autoliv has had this system in serial production for more than a year.

However, SUVs are of particular concern for pedestrians due to their higher and more box-shaped fronts. The fatality risk for pedestrians is 2.5 times higher in SUV impacts than it is for regular cars. Another difference is the impact area. While most pedestrians killed by passenger cars perish when they hit their heads on the hood or windshield area of the car, the majority of severe injuries to pedestrians caused by SUVs occur when the front hood edge hits the pedestrian’s chest and abdomen. Autoliv has therefore developed an airbag to address this problem. Triggered by a pre-crash sensor (such as radar), the airbag deploys a few milliseconds before a pedestrian impact.

The system has been tested in both computer simulations and in real crash tests, involving crash dummies representing an average male and a very short female. In the simulations, the Front Edge Airbag demonstrated its ability to pass the tough requirements of EuroNCAP, the European crash test organization that rates new light vehicle models. In the full-scale tests, the airbag decreased all critical injury values considerably. The largest reduction was for the abdomen of the male dummy. Here the injury risk was reduced from 99% to just 3% when using the Front Edge Airbag. The test velocity was 40 km/h (25 mph), which is the average impact speed in fatal pedestrian accidents. Based on the crash tests, it is estimated that this new airbag could save hundreds of lives every year in the United States alone.

See also ESV paper of Fredriksson et al 2007.