Each year, more than 270,000 pedestrians lose their lives on the world's roads. Globally, pedestrians constitute 22% of all road traffic fatalities, and in some countries this proportion is as high as two thirds of all road traffic deaths. Millions of pedestrians are non-fatally injured and some of whom are left with permanent disabilities. These incidents cause much suffering and grief as well as economic hardship. To lower the rate of pedestrian injuries and fatalities, the Euro-Ncap committee adopted an overall impact star-grade system in 2009, making the pedestrian protection cut-off score required to obtain the best impact-star grade more stringent until 2016. It is very difficult to surpass the enhanced pedestrian cut-off score using past methods.
In this paper, I determine the hood's worst-performing areas in terms of pedestrian protection by analyzing previous pedestrian test results. To improve performance at these areas, I developed a Damping latch & hinge and a 3-corner rearward pop-up system. I then proceeded to optimize the design of the hood inner panel, Long hood + Damping latch & hinge, and 3-corner rearward pop-up systems. Each system was put through a real vehicle pedestrian protection test to verify that it could improve pedestrian protection performance at the designated areas. As a result, we found that a 3-corner rearward pop-up system is the best method for pedestrian protection with consideration for cost, weight, and design.