You never want to experience it, but whenever a pedestrian is involved in a collision with a car, his or her head can often suffer grave injuries due to a collision with hard elements underneath the hood, such as the engine block. To reduce the number of such impacts, some auto-makers (like Nissan and Toyota) have introduced the Pop-up Hood concept, which raises the hood to create more space away from the engine block (after taking into account the deformation of the hood due to the collision with the pedestrian’s head). This of course, requires that the collision is properly detected to start with.
That’s where Denso comes in with this new pressure sensor that is to be installed where the front bumper is. It is equipped with sensors that can detect where in the front of the vehicle the collision is happening. Previous designs used acceleration sensors that were not as effective. This is probably the last line of defense that could prevent serious, if not fatal, injuries to a pedestrian. So far, those new sensors have been spotted in the Toyota Crown Hybrid, which is available in Japan.
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