Automotive safety
Automotive safety is the design and use of vehicles and related systems to prevent crashes and reduce injuries when crashes occur.
Active safety: Vehicle features that help drivers avoid crashes or reduce their likelihood. These systems intervene before a collision, often through sensing, warnings, or automatic control.
Crashworthiness: A vehicle's ability to protect occupants during a crash. It describes the injury-reduction side of automotive safety.
Advanced driver-assistance systems: Electronic systems that assist drivers with tasks such as braking, steering, and monitoring surroundings. They apply sensing and control to reduce specific crash risks.
Road safety: The prevention of deaths and injuries across road transport, including vehicles, people, and infrastructure. Automotive safety is one part of this broader system.
Passive safety: Vehicle features that reduce injury during and after a crash. These systems protect occupants once a collision cannot be avoided.
Crash avoidance: Measures and technologies that help prevent collisions from occurring. It captures the prevention side of safety, distinct from surviving a crash.
Automatic emergency braking: A system that applies a vehicle's brakes when it detects an imminent collision and the driver does not respond adequately. It can mitigate or prevent some forward collisions.
Vision Zero: A road-safety approach that treats deaths and serious injuries as preventable and prioritizes safe system design. It shifts responsibility from vehicle occupants alone to the whole transport system.
Electronic stability control: A system that detects loss of directional control and selectively brakes wheels to help stabilize a vehicle. It can correct skids that would otherwise develop into loss-of-control crashes.
Kinematics: The study of motion, including position, velocity, and acceleration, without considering its causes. Crash motion explains how occupants and vehicles move during impact.