Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of adapted car controls on drivers safety. These controls should be attached to meet the needs of handicapped people to drive a car in the same way as an able person could do. That means that primary (brake, accelerator and steering) and/or secondary controls (gear selector, ignition/starter switch, turn indicator lever, hazard flasher, horn, wiper/washer, defroster control, etc.), have to be modified in order to permit the normal driving to people with physical impairments and reduced abilities. While primary controls are those which directly affect the direction and speed of the moving vehicle, and are based on mechanical or electromechanical devices, secondary controls, whose main utility is to safely manage the vehicle in traffic situations, are based on electronic or electromechanical technologies. Although the access of the disabled to drive a car necessary goes trough the adequate adaptation of its controls, there is a lack of studies related with the influence of the position and strength of this adaptations, on the injury risk created if a vehicle collision occurs. The present paper shows the results obtained at the first stage of an study developed at the Automobile Laboratory of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain). This study establishes the main criteria of car adaptive control design and installation that minimise the potential injury risk to the driver. The applied methodology to test the goodness of the fitted adaptive control was based in theoretical and experimental procedures. The theoretical process was based on a series of simulator tests made with the SEMAV simulator, to measure and determine the critical position of those car adaptations, that seriously compromise the survival space in the case of an accident.
The experimental process makes use of dynamic computer simulations of different impact situations, in which vehicle, driver and the different car control adaptations have been modelled, and correlated with experimental research based on a series of impact tests, that reproduce the conditions of a real impact. The conclusions will help to develop National and International Standards related with car control adaptations in vehicles driven by disabled people.