Occupant Behaviour During Pre-Impact Braking

The occupant restraint systems fitted to almost all road vehicles are passive in nature. These systems only react when there is a crash and mitigate injuries in a fixed or limited manner. Some of the more modern systems have improved functionality and can tune their response to suit a range of variables including impact severity, occupant weight, and occupant fore/aft position. Such adaptive restraints are sometimes known as smart restraints and are usually developed to meet the U.S. requirements of FMVSS 208, in the absence of any European equivalent. This report aims to describe the first work of the PRISM project, which seeks to provide new, extended, and more detailed data to assist in the development of smart restraint systems.