The dynamic safety concept comprises all the active safety
vehicle characteristics supporting the driver in critical dynamic
maneuvers. Dynamic safety is therefore a major active safety
requirement with great potential for reducing road accidents
throughout the world. It is the combination of not only active
chassis systems (ESC, ABS...) but also passive chassis systems
(tires, suspension...) which determines the overall dynamic safety
performance of the vehicle.
This paper describes a set of test procedures which cover with
only a few specific maneuvers the widest possible range of critical
dynamic situations. Beyond a simple pass/fail result, these test
procedures will be able to quantify and therefore compare the
dynamic safety performance. These results could be used by the
suitable organizations to define a rating system to thereby
increase public awareness of the dynamic safety performance of
vehicles on the market. During the development of the test
procedures, state-of-the-art test instrumentation is considered in
order to maximize test objectiveness and repeatability.
Furthermore, special emphasis is given to normalize test results
with the aim of avoiding track/grip dependency and adapting the
assessment to the different vehicle types.
This paper summarizes the latest developments corresponding to
the stability assistance domain of the European project eVALUE
(Testing and Evaluation Methods of ICT-based Safety Systems, FP7 -
ICT 1st call, grant agreement no. 215607). Its main focus is to
define objective methods for the assessment of active safety
performance.