Meanwhile, Honda was also creating its own technology for body collision safety performance. Having experienced the so-called “second traffic war” in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japan began applying frontal collision regulations in 1994, and in the following year established J-NCAP (Japan New Car Assessment Program), which evaluates safety under stricter conditions than the law. In 1998, Europe introduced a unified standard, but the different testing methods in Japan, the U.S., and Europe affected the development and evaluation of automobiles.
The rigid barrier (non-deforming) front full-wrap collision method used by the U.S. and Japan was suitable for evaluating seat belts and airbags. Since it was necessary to suppress the impact to the occupants by crushing the front part of the vehicle to absorb collision energy, a relatively low body rigidity was advantageous. On the other hand, Europe evaluated deformable barriers in frontal offset collisions, with the main focus on securing the occupants’ survival zone. Because of the offset, or one-sided impact and high input load, the development tended to stiffen the car’s body. In other words, there were two standards: one was to soften the body and the other was to stiffen it.
Honda believed that in order to save the occupants in the real world, both of these characteristics needed to be achieved at a core level. Honda then worked to mathematically verify a “new concept for occupant deceleration control in the event of a collision” and to realize the technology. The new concept was characterized by controlling G-force (acceleration) during a collision in three major stages. In the initial stage, when occupants are not yet subjected to a large G-force, the vehicle body generates a high degree of deceleration to absorb energy. Then, at the stage when G-force begins to be applied to the occupants, vehicle body deceleration is kept low to prevent an increase in the occupants’ G-force. Finally, a constant deceleration is generated to effectively prevent cabin deformation. This enables the cabin to be protected and survival zone to be secured while reducing occupant injury. Honda termed this collision-safe body that introduced this concept, together with the new airbag system and pedestrian injury mitigation body, Honda “G-Control” safety technology.
Honda believes there are no points where safety begins and ends. Always keeping ahead of the real world, Honda noticed that the rapid increase in the number of tall SUVs and minivans was causing more and more small cars to suffer serious damage. It could not remain in a fixed barrier forever. To get closer to the real world, Honda believed it was necessary to develop technologies for so-called compatibility (coexistence^*1), based on the premise that cars of different sizes and weights collide with each other. Since the mid-1980s, Honda had been conducting crash tests between cars at the Japan Automobile Research Institute (JARI) and overseas facilities, but these were mainly for the purpose of verifying the accuracy of airbags. Honda began conducting car-to-car crash tests under the new compatibility concept, but JARI was inconvenient as it was the only testing facility in Japan at the time. Depending on how crowded the testing facility was, tests could not be conducted for several months, and Tsukuba, where JARI was located, was too far away from Honda’s development base to reflect test results promptly. Honda’s tradition was to “do it today, do it now” if something needed fixing.
Furthermore, only a limited number of developers would be able to see the actual crash if it were done at a distance. This went against Honda’s emphasis on its “Three Realities” Principle, to share the same work, hardware, and realities.
”We want all our engineers who develop Honda cars to see the reality of a crash happening in the real world.”
The development team appealed to upper management for the necessity of its own experimental facility, and after receiving approval, construction was hastily begun. In March 2000, the world’s first indoor omni-directional crash test facility, known as Building 67, was completed. The vast 40,000-square-meter crash test space, equivalent to the area of Tokyo Dome, did not have a single pillar to support the roof. This was done to ensure that the pillars would not restrict the experiments and to facilitate the reproduction of various types of collisions. Tests could be conducted indoors so as not be affected by weather conditions, and to create a comfortable environment for testing in both summer and winter. This was based on the Honda philosophy of “respect for people.”