RAYMOND, Ohio—As part of its long-running “Safety for Everyone” campaign, Honda has established the audacious goal of what it calls a “zero-collision society.” But rather than making big claims about developing a fully-autonomous vehicle, which Honda hasn’t done, the company is trying to chip away at the more than 37,000 vehicle-related fatalities that occurred in the U.S. in 2017 with a multi-pronged approach.
Here in central Ohio, engineers are working with state-of-the-art facilities and equipment to boost active safety systems like its HondaSensing suite of safety technology with old fashioned passive systems like structural steel frames or new airbag designs that protect passengers in a crash. Honda provided members of the press with a rare tour inside its Honda R&D Americas headquarters this week.
Honda officials say that increasingly, safety — and specifically, third-party ratings from the likes of the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety — figure into the top three factors consumers weigh when purchasing a vehicle. Honda and Acura have 10, 2019 models that have earned IIHS’s Top Safety Pick or Top Safety Pick+ ratings, and all 15, 2019 model-year Honda and Acura vehicles that have undergone NHTSA crash testing have earned a 5-star overall rating.
And Honda prides itself on its growing list of safety firsts, including the first upward-deploying front passenger airbag, in 1990 in the Acura Legend; first omni-directional crash-test facility, in 2000; and the first autonomous braking system, in the 2006 Acura RL. It hopes its new three-chamber airbag goes industry-wide and joins that list.
“It’s part of our company’s culture,” said Art St. Cyr, business head unit and vice president of auto operations for American Honda Motor Co. “We have a philosophy at Honda that we want to be a company that society wants to exist. That means we have to protect our customers. That’s part of the whole mantra of doing this.”
Opened in 1984, the 1.6 million square-foot Honda R&D Americas facility, located in the countryside about 45 miles northwest of Columbus, employs around 1,600 people and is Honda’s largest research-and-development facility outside of Japan. Its Advanced Safety Research facility opened in 2003.
Honda is also benefiting from partnerships, with both Ohio State University for the latter’s distracted-driving simulation laboratory, which Honda helps to fund, with NHTSA at the Transportation Research Center, which is adjacent to Honda’s R&D campus, and the state of Ohio at its Marysville smart intersection, where it is testing vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology.
Here’s a look at Honda’s various safety-testing facilities.
Driving Simulation Lab at Ohio State University
Honda runs between 10 and 15 test projects per year, with each driver at the wheel for between one and two hours being asked to perform driving tasks and operate various tasks using a current-generation infotainment touchscreen and center console.
One lesson the company has learned? “If you’re on a phone call, that your field of vision starts to become smaller. So you don’t see things in your peripheral vision as much as you do in your straight-ahead vision,” said Steven Felt, chief engineer for interior strategy.
Virtual Verification
That helps engineers figure out how to best build cars to withstand violent collisions, and it has led to Honda’s Advanced Compatibility Engineering "ACE" body structure, which uses different grades of steel, plus hot-stamped, low-ductility steel “soft zones” that allow the frame to bend at predictable, strategic points to absorb energy and divert it away from occupants in the cabin.
On the current-generation Honda Civic, for example, soft zones appear on the B-pillars and along both sides of the rear frame.
Pedestrian Impact Lab
Here, researchers drop what looks like a small bowling ball onto the hoods of vehicles to measure the impact of a pedestrian’s head after being struck head-on. They also ram the front bumper in a stomach-churning simulation with an upright, hinged cylindrical object meant to mimmic a leg, to measure tibia bending and affects on knee ligaments. Work at the lab has led to features like energy-absorbing fender brackets and hood hinges, and collapsable cowl structures to minimize injury to pedestrians.
Dummy Lab
Honda performs more than 2,400 tests per year just to maintain the dummies, which help the automaker to measure things like head drop, torso impact and knee impact in crashes.
Crash Simulator
It’s a cage-like vehicle structure built atop a platform that rides on a steel track and is fitted with seats, dashboard, a crash-test dummy and airbag equipment. It allows engineers to tune and verify restraint systems before undergoing full vehicle testing, with about 440 tests done per year.
The system uses nitrogen stored in six large accumulators to pressurize oil and push it through a valve, generating an incredible 555,000 horsepower — the equivalent of eight 747s at takeoff — in a short but powerful burst. Unlike the Crash Barrier lab, there’s no actual collision. Here, the sled is is pushed backward violently in a recreation of the force of rebounding from a crash.
Crash Barrier
Active Safety
Honda says the suite of driver-assist safety features will be standard across its lineup by 2022.
“Where we’re headed right now is a perfect direction of both active safety and passive safety,” said Brian Bautsch, manager and principal engineer for crash safety. “I think they’re gonna be needed together for quite a while where the passive safety side of what we do heavily relies on some of the active safety systems, being able to dissipate that energy in a potential collision.
“Slowing that car down 5, 10, 15 miles an hour is a huge energy savings and really puts a lot less burden on the passive system.”
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