Editorial: Special Issue dedicated to the EU Integrated Project Advanced Protection Systems (APROSYS)

The Integrated Project ‘Advanced Protection Systems (APROSYS)’ objectives were to: (i) develop new human injury criteria and injury tolerance; (ii) develop new human mathematical models for use in virtual testing; (iii) come up with the design of a new world-wide harmonised side impact crash dummy representing a small female car occupant; (iv) develop principles and tools to enable the design, implementation and evaluation of intelligent safety systems; (v) development of test methods and advanced protection systems for injury reduction in most relevant accident types involving car occupants, motorcyclists, pedestrians and cyclists; and (vi) enhance virtual tests technology for design and evaluation of crash protection systems.

In search of accomplishing such objectives, it was necessary to review what the state-of-the-art is, identify limitations in current approaches including most feasible methods, and assess procedures and technologies available in the framework of pre-competitive research and development. A group of forty-seven partners participated in the project including 7 vehicle manufacturers, 11 suppliers, 13 universities, 14 research institutes and 2 EU representatives. For the objectives to be fully met, APROSYS was divided in nine inter-connected Sub-Projects: SP1-Car accidents; SP2-Heavy vehicle accidents; SP3-Pedestrian-pedal cyclist accidents; SP4-Motorcycle accidents; SP5-Injury biomechanics; SP6-Intelligent safety systems; SP7-Virtual testing; SP8-Training and innovation related activities; besides the Integrated project management.

This special issue of the International Journal of Crashworthiness contains the first series of eight peer reviewed papers that come directly from the research done and deliverables of the APROSYS project. A second series of six papers, complemented by other submissions, will be published in Volume 14 Issue 1. We do realise that these sixteen papers show only a limited part of the total outcomes of the project. For information on other results, please refer to www.aprosys.com.

We hope that the reader can appraise the results of the project and how they are positioned against the actual state-of-the-art. We also expect that this special issue allows the reader to weigh up the important benefit of this Integrated Project and how it contributes to the harmonisation of passive safety research activities world-wide, how its outputs are meant to be employed in the development of European policy on vehicle related safety and, above all, how the project contributes to the competitiveness of European car manufacturers and suppliers. From a societal point of view, the technologies developed in APROSYS have been estimated for various accident scenarios to reduce number of fatalities by 1500 per year in Europe. We hope that many of the achievements of the project can become valuable references to the interested reader.