Programs & Labs
Third annual ME Day highlights past, future of transportation safety
Claus Ehlers
Max Donath
The Department of Mechanical Engineering marked the third annual ME Day with a focus on transportation safety, including a preview of new automotive safety systems and a look back at the innovations of ME Prof. James "Crash" Ryan.
Smart cars are safer cars
The 2004 Founders' Lecture, titled "Active Safety in the Vehicle," was delivered by Dr. Claus Ehlers of DaimlerChrysler AG. As Senior Manager of System Safety and Assisting Systems at the company's headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, Ehlers oversees a diverse research and development program that includes collision avoidance, crash mitigation, and driver support technologies.
Ehlers began by calling attention to the link between active safety systems—those designed to prevent, avoid, or mitigate collisions—and passive safety systems such as bumpers and seat belts, which are intended to protect occupants in the event of an accident. A complete view of vehicle safety, he said, must take both active and passive systems into account.
Among the active safety systems currently being developed by DaimlerChrysler, Ehlers highlighted "smart" computer systems to improve vehicle stability and prevent rollovers by changing suspension characteristics in real time; he said this system had already been implemented in Mercedes-Benz models, and was close to being implemented in vehicles manufactured by Chrysler.
Several driver assistive systems currently in the research phase were also featured in Ehlers' presentation, including an self-parking system for passenger cars and an autonomous docking system for buses that could improve passenger access and reduce vehicle damage due to curb impacts.
Responding to audience questions, Ehlers noted that active safety systems raise important issues of liability—including the question of who is ultimately responsible for "autonomous" actions taken by vehicle safety systems.
Remembering "Crash" Ryan
The lecture was followed by a reception and dinner in the Campus Club. Dr. Max Donath, director of the Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute, narrated a presentation on the work of auto safety pioneer James "Crash" Ryan, a member of the Mechanical Engineering faculty from 1931 to 1963.
Although little known to the driving public, Ryan was an early leader in safety engineering for passenger cars; his work included innovations such as crash-absorbing bumpers, recessed dashboards, and steering columns that collapse on impact. These early passive safety systems were featured in rarely seen footage of crash tests supervised by Ryan on the University of Minnesota campus in the late 1950s.
Ryan was also a strong promoter of seat belts, and his research on the benefits of seat belt use was instrumental in drafting federal legislation that required seat belts to be installed in all vehicles. Ryan received a patent for his self-tensioning retractable seat belt mechanism, the first of its kind, in 1963.
To establish the benefits of seat belt use, Ryan conducted numerous human trials using a rail-mounted "crash sled" which produced impacts at speeds of up to 20 miles an hour. Ryan himself was the sled's first occupant, and he participated in numerous impact tests along with his graduate students.
Ryan also developed the first aircraft "black box" flight recorder. This was a purely mechanical unit, which recorded flight data as impressions on metal film and was engineered to survive a crash, making it possible for the first time to objectively analyze the moments leading up to an accident. Today, the descendents of Ryan's black box are required equipment in all commercial and military aircraft, and are beginning to appear in commercial trucks and some consumer automobiles.