Leading the world

In our desire to lead the world in vehicle safety we established the Global Outstanding Assessment (GOA) in 1995. Updated regularly, the voluntary internal safety assessment allows us to target the very highest safety results while meeting and exceeding international safety standards and evaluations.

Where it all began

Since the creation of our first crash testing facility and Safety Evaluation Department in 1966, we have carried out extensive research and development into Passive Safety.

To fully understand the tremendous forces involved in a collision and how this contributes to occupant and pedestrian injury, we carry out crash testing in our facilities through the year, day and night.

Virtual reality

To support advanced safety development we have a family of virtual reality human models that we call THUMS. Since 1997, they have allowed us to analyse injuries in much more detail than conventional dummies; from ligament, tendon, muscle and even skin damage, our THUMS family are nearly human! Our most recent THUMS version 4 released in 2012, consists of more than 1 million elements.

We also recreate collisions from actual accident data in order to constantly improve features such as impact absorbing body structures, occupant cells, airbags, seat belts and whiplash lessening seats.