Concept Mouldings Sets its Sights on Saloon Vehicles for its New Endura Safety System at Automechanika Launch

WOLVERHAMPTON, England, September 15 -- Concept Mouldings which recently launched a range of energy absorbing aftermarket frontal protection systems has shown how this technology could be integrated into new vehicle designs at Automechanika.

The basis of the new system is a plastic, energy absorbing barrier between the pedestrian and hard parts at the front of the vehicle such as the bonnet leading edge, the radiator and the engine. Tests on the aftermarket Endura Frontal Protection System conducted at MIRA have already shown that the risk of pedestrian injury can be reduced by up to fifty times on many large vehicles.

While the aftermarket product is an immediate solution for vehicle owners who want to make their vehicles safer, Concept Mouldings sees that its products could also become integrated into some vehicles within the next year or two. The company holds world patents and patents pending on a number of such integrated solutions and is actively seeking joint ventures with research, technology and manufacturing partners to assist in integrating passive and active pedestrian safety solutions.

The system presented at Automechanika shows how in the event of a front end collision with a pedestrian the built in Endura FPS could automatically move to an active pre-collision position above the bonnet leading edge passively protecting the pedestrian from this hard area.

The intelligent sensor system could then activate another pre-impact change lowering the bonnet leading edge even further behind the Endure FPS. As a result, this will increase the energy absorbing space between the pedestrian and other hard parts such as the radiator and engine. The simultaneous deployment of airbags could then act as a barrier between the pedestrian and vehicle engine hard parts and the windscreen.

The dipping of vehicle front and deployment of airbags encourages the pedestrian over the vehicle bonnet onto a safer cushioned surface. It also reduces the chances of a pedestrian falling under the wheels of the vehicle but the risk can be reduced even more by the deployment of airbags to fill the remaining gap.

A number of current vehicle designs already have moulded fronts so all or parts of the system outlined could be incorporated easily and quickly with no change to the external appearance of the vehicle.

The scale of the problem this addresses within Europe is underlined by the fact that 900 UK and 12,000 European pedestrians are killed every year and more than 9,000 and 290,000 respectively are seriously injured, according to statistics produced for the EU by the Transport Research Laboratory.

Ian Finney said: "This unacceptable level of carnage in Europe and also the rest of the world, where death and injury levels are even higher, can be reduced dramatically if we can just implement the technical solutions that are available today.

We currently have the capacity to make 200,000 units within a very short space of time so we just need the support of vehicle manufacturers to move this forward very quickly and start saving pedestrian lives."

For further detail also view the following sites: www.frontalprotectionsystems.eu, www.conceptmouldings.co.uk, www.endura-fps.com