The commitment of Forschungsgesellschaft Kraftfahrwesen mbH Aachen (fka) to improving vehicle safety is reflected in diverse activities. fka’s extensive research and development activities are oriented toward accident avoidance (active safety) as well as reducing the consequences of accidents (passive safety). The key focuses are:

• Active chassis systems and driving dynamics control systems
• Driver assistance
• Crash-optimised structural design
• Pedestrian protection

The company’s engineering competence in the chassis, body, electronics and driver assistance departments forms an essential basis for efficient handling of cross-disciplinary vehicle safety issues. In addition to carrying out technical development and testing of safety systems, fka analyses customer acceptance issues in order to assess the benefits of such systems.

fka’s activities in the vehicle safety area are completed by studies of vehicle protection in low-speed collisions. In such situations, the primary considerations are ease of repair and damage tolerance, instead of protection of vehicle occupants and other road users.