Computer designed ears have flaws

Press, 15 January 1988, Page 4

Computer designed ears have flaws

By

TONY VERDON

in London

Cars designed by computer may be more dangerous than those designed by conventional techniques, according to a transport scientist at Birmingham University. Dr Murray Mackay, of the university’s accident research unit, said that computer-aided techniques used by the leading manufacturers enabled cars to be so finely tuned that passengers in a collision unplanned for by the designers, would suffer serious injury. ‘‘Crashes happen at all types of speeds, from all

sorts of directions, into all sorts of structures,” he said.

“If the design process is so focused on a limited number of legal requirements which it only just meets, then the actual protection provided on the road may not be satisfactory.

“The very efficiencies of the design process may well be having a negative effect,” said Dr Mackay. Many drivers were exposed to serious injury from the steering wheel in a frontal crash at speeds above 20 m.p.h.

Manufacturers also needed to think much harder about the design of

the exterior of cars to protect pedestrians. The changes in car design did not have to be radical, he said. The mean speed of accidents in which pedestrians have to be admitted to hospital is only 22 m.p.h.

However, lowering repair costs, rather than accident rates, had been the prime criterion of much car design, said Dr Mackay. “It has resulted in bumpers which are essentially rigid beams set precisely at adult knee height so that they cause the maximum possible disabling joint damage at the lowest possible speed.”