The aim of the programme is to reduce pedestrian injuries – namely lower back and upper legs – which are common in collisions between a pedestrian and a four-wheel drive vehicle or van.

This is the latest example of Honda using its pedestrian dummies to proactively conduct research in the area of pedestrian injury mitigation, as it has for the past decade.

Honda Australia’s Managing Director, Mr. Yasuhide Mizuno, said cars imported into Australia should benefit from this improved technology as early as next year.

“Honda is committed to producing the best cars and ensuring they are as safe as possible. Honda models sold in Australia will soon be tested using this latest crash test technology making our cars safer than ever,” Mr. Mizuno said.

In 1998, Honda became the first in the world to develop a pedestrian crash test dummy that reproduced the human body’s kinematics during vehicle-to-pedestrian collisions.

The project identified the parts of the vehicle that caused the most injuries and developed revolutionary safety technologies to reduce pedestrian head injuries during a collision.

In the same year, Honda announced the development of a vehicle body designed to reduce pedestrian head injuries and applied it to the Honda HR-V.

Two years later, Honda continued its advancements by developing the second generation pedestrian dummy, POLAR II, which further improved understanding of the human body’s kinematics in an accident.

With the introduction of POLAR III, the faithful reproduction of lower back and upper legs has been further improved, enabling the evaluation of bone fractures in these areas in addition to the existing ability to evaluate injuries to knee ligaments and fractures to lower leg bones.