Numerical and experimental investigation of a lightweight bonnet for pedestrian safety

A topic of great consideration in current vehicle development in Europe is pedestrian protection. The enforcement of a new regulation trying to decrease the injuries to head, pelvis, and leg of pedestrian impacted by cars, is imposing great changes in vehicles' front design. In the present work a design solution for the bonnet, which is the main body part interacting with the human head during a car to pedestrian collision, is proposed. This solution meets the stiffness and safety targets, takes into account the manufacturing and recyclability requirements and gives a relevant contribution to vehicle lightweight. Thus this proposed solution puts in evidence that safety and lightweight are not incompatible targets. The amount of potential injury to the pedestrian head is evaluated, as prescribed by the standard test procedures, by means of a headform launched on the bonnet. However, the standard approach based on the head injury criterion (HIC) value only is reported to be largely unsatisfactory: therefore, a new experimental methodology for the measurement of the translational and the rotational accelerations has been developed, and the experimental results are reported. This would be a starting point for the evolution of currently adopted injury criteria to increase the safety of the vulnerable road user

Understanding (and tackling) need satisfier escalation

Contemporary consumption patterns, embedded in profit-maximizing economic systems, are driving a worsening socio-ecological crisis, in particular through the escalating production and consumption of goods with high material and/or energy intensity. Establishing minimum and maximum standards of consumption (or “consumption corridors”) has been suggested as a way to address this crisis. Consumption corridors provide the normative basis for sustainable consumption, that is, enough consumption for individuals to satisfy needs, but not too much to collectively surpass environmental limits. Current consumption patterns (especially in the global North) do not yet fall within consumption corridors, and standards are not fixed over time. Consumption is socially constructed and can escalate due to socio-economic, technological, or infrastructural influences. In this article, we propose a framework to understand such escalating trends. This approach can be used as a tool for comprehending how consumption evolves over time, as well as for identifying the most effective leverage points to intervene and prevent escalation from happening in the first place. We build on theories of human-need satisfaction and combine these conceptual understandings with insights from research on socio-technical provisioning systems, sociological approaches to consumption, and perspectives on infrastructure lock-in. We illustrate our framework by systemically considering escalation for a specific technological product – the private car

Corporate political strategizing in the European Union during the 2007 – 10 recession : an exploratory study

Using original data collected from a survey of Brussels-based Government Affairs Managers (GAMs) in May and June 2010, we explore the political actions of firms in the European Union during the 2007 – 10 financial crisis. Findings suggest that the financial constraints imposed by the crisis had a significant impact on whether GAMs entered into short-term or long-term relationships with policy makers and whether they engaged in individual or collective action. Significant cross-country differences were also observed between the political objectives pursued by firms, their propensity to engage in collective political action, and the tactics they use to influence policy makers. Taken together, these findings challenge institutional explanations of EU lobbying, which suggest that the EU system of policy making provides powerful incentives for firms to adopt specific lobbying behaviours in order to gain a seat at the EU policy-making table

Welfare Implications of Car Feebates: A Simulation Analysis

Vehicle taxation based on inline image emissions is increasingly being adopted worldwide to shift consumer purchases to low-carbon cars, yet evidence on its effectiveness and economic impact is limited. We focus on feebate schemes, which impose a fee on high-carbon vehicles and give a rebate to low-carbon cars. We estimate demand for passenger cars in Germany and simulate the impact of alternative feebate schemes on emissions, consumer welfare, public revenues and firm profits. We find that revenue-neutral feebate schemes are welfare decreasing; welfare can only increase with schemes that increase tax revenues at the expense of consumer and producer surplus