Development of an event data recorder and reconstruction analysis

Abstract

A type of Event Data Recorder (EDR) was developed which can detect a crash accident automatically, and record the vehicle's motion and driver's maneuver during a pre-defined time period before and after the accident. The data items of the EDR included the acceleration, yaw rate, vehicle speed, engine rpm, braking application, steering and several digital inputs for recording driver's maneuver. To detect the accident-related-crash, it is important to understand characteristics of the crash signal, which are much different from those of normal driving. Therefore, analytical considerations should be taken in designing pre-filtering circuits and selecting appropriate parameters for identifying crash accidents. And, it is necessary to select proper combination of motion sensors and design proper pre-filtering circuits in order to describe the vehicle's motion. The analysis algorithms were developed and implemented which can perform accurate detection of crash accidents, simulating pre-crash trajectories, and calculating ΔV and PDOF for reconstruction analysis of crash accidents. The developed EDR was installed on passenger cars and several types of validation tests were conducted. Through the tests, the accuracy of the recorded data and usefulness of the analysis tool for reconstruction have been validated. Copyright © 2004 SAE International.