Car Crash Compatibility & Honda's Pursuit "Safety for Everyone"

Honda's "Safety for Everyone" initiative applies an increasingly comprehensive and industry-leading approach to vehicle safety by providing enhanced levels of occupant protection to Honda and Acura vehicles regardless of size or price, along with improved safety for pedestrians.
A total of ten Honda and Acura vehicles implement the "Safety for Everyone" initiative for the 2006 model year. Honda vehicles that incorporate "Safety for Everyone" technology for 2006 include the Accord, CR-V, Pilot, Odyssey, Ridgeline and the all-new Civic. Acura vehicles that incorporate "Safety for Everyone" technology for 2006 include the MDX, RL, TL and TSX.
On a sales weighted basis for the 2006 model year, "Safety for Everyone" technology is being applied to approximately 83 percent of American Honda vehicles; 82 percent of Honda Division vehicles and 91 percent of Acura Division vehicles.
The "Safety for Everyone" commitment includes providing the following technologies as standard equipment on all trim levels when applicable: front side airbags, side curtain airbags and anti-lock brakes. Light truck products also include Vehicle Stability Assist (VSA®) and a rollover sensor for side curtain airbag deployment.
For enhanced pedestrian safety, features in the front of the vehicle such as energy absorbing hood supports and windshield wiper pivots are designed to reduce injuries to pedestrians. The majority of these features and advanced technologies are either optional or not available in competitors' vehicles within the same respective segments.
Honda's unique Advanced Compatibility Engineering™ (ACE)™ body structure, which offers enhanced occupant protection, is being applied to all entirely new vehicle platforms in the U.S. and globally over the next five to six years. The ACE structure enhances collision energy management by increasing the area where two frames may connect in a collision and then dispersing that force through more load bearing components compared to traditional body construction.

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Honda will first use the new body design technology on the all-new Life mini-car, which is scheduled for release September 5 Japan. In the future, during full model changeovers vehicles built on new platforms will be equipped with the new crash compatibility body design. Honda's new crash compatibility body employs a front-end frame structure that reduces the potential concentrated force of an impact by dispersing and absorbing crash energy over a larger area - and does not easily become misaligned laterally or vertically with the frame of the other vehicle involved in the crash.
The new Honda Life, a Japanese-market minicar, is equipped with a highly efficient energy-absorbing main frame, a bulkhead (upper frame) that absorbs the upper part of the collision energy, and a lower member that helps prevent misalignment of the frames of the vehicles involved. This prevents lateral and vertical misalignment of the frames and disperses and absorbs the collision energy.
In a frontal crash with up to a two-ton-class passenger vehicle (i.e., Acura RL), the new Life demonstrates improved collision energy absorption of the engine compartment by approximately 50-percent, while reducing the load on the passenger compartment by some 30-percent. This reduces the deformation of the passenger compartment during a crash and enhances occupant protection, even as it reduces aggressivity toward the other vehicle.
In 1998, Honda announced the development of its G-CON collision safety body technology that reduces sudden deceleration on vehicle occupants and helps secure cabin space for their survival. In 2000, Honda set its own new targets in the field of safety, moving ahead with independent research on vehicle-to-vehicle collision safety, including conducting crash tests, which more precisely simulate real-world accident conditions.
As a result, Honda now has taken G-CON technology another important step forward: this new crash compatibility body provides greater safety in collisions between vehicles of differing size, weight and structural design.
Terminology:
Self-protection performance: Reducing injury to vehicle occupants in a crash and ensuring survival space.
Aggressivity toward other vehicles: The one-sided increase in damage inflicted due to excessive concentration of the impact load during a collision between vehicles.

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