Vehicle Handling Assessment Using a Combined Subjective-Objective Approach

One of the long-running themes throughout vehicle dynamics research has been a desire for a better understanding of the correlation between subjective and objective measures of vehicle handling. This theme can be traced back to the earliest contributions of that great automobile engineer Maurice Olley, who provided an analytical insight into qualitative expressions of vehicle behaviour.

Results from a set of experiments using two vehicles, eight drivers and forty-six response metrics have been analysed to identify links between objective data and driver ratings of passenger car handling. The procedures involved matching objective metrics to ratings using ridge regression plots followed by least squares regression. Results showed that 70 to 90% of the variability of drivers' ratings could be accounted for by regression equations with greater than 95% significance.

The conclusions highlighted that the style of subjective assessment, using ratings relative to a reference vehicle, had significant merit. Also it was possible to link frequency response and transient step input test metrics to ratings given by the drivers.