Design versus Safety: The ongoing battle

[svgallery name="2010 Buick LaCrosse"] Photos and story by John LeBlanc Form versus function. It's the Battle Royale behind most automakers' closed doors, fought between the aesthetic wishes of the design team and the slide-rule-wielding safety engineers. Sometimes, the slide-rulers win. Take for instance the 1972 Volvo Experimental Safety Car. With safety features such as crumple zones, rollover protection and bumpers the size of picnic tables, the VESC was engineered to illustrate the state-of-the-art in car safety. Trouble was, it looked like its design inspiration was a refrigerator packing box. "Safety tends to ruin design," jokes David Lyons, executive director, creative design at General Motors. There's some truth to that. The rules and regulations involved in new-car design seem limitless and are always changing. Each market has its own set of regulations that cover every aspect of vehicle design, from the height of hoods and the shape of head- and taillights, to such details as door handles and interior fittings. The result of all this is that the positions of a car's major visual characteristics become uniform across the industry. But it's just not the exterior of cars that are tied down with safety requirements. The interiors also present their own hurdles. "It's amazing. Almost every single piece of interior trim is now a safety device of some kind. We assume someone is going to be hitting at it some time with some force," says Lyons. Seats are safety devices you happen to sit on. There are sensors to check if the airbag goes off. The materials need to be validated against fire. The side of the seat now stores airbags, so there can't be any foam or cushioning preventing it from being activated properly. After more than 20 years in the business, GM's Lyons says the battle to make good-looking cars – inside and out – versus more constraining safety requirements goes in cycles. "With the latest European safety regulations, there are lots of hard points that you need to be creative in working with. Coping with these regulations is an industry challenge," says Volvo's exterior chief designer, Fedde Talsma. Regulations ask for a certain amount of space between a car's engine and its hood to allow a crumple zone for pedestrians. That means raising the profile at the front of the car. But as Lyons explains that has a domino affect on how the rest of the car's proportions play out. "You first raise the hood. Then you have to raise the seats so the driver can see over the hood. Then you need to raise the roof for the right amount of headroom. In the end, its no surprise we have larger cars," says Lyons. Creating a distinct visual identity for a brand is challenging. For example, the V-shape in the forthcoming 2011 S60 grille is a result of the new pedestrian collision regulations. "The reality is, we designers want all cars to have the proportions of a 1930's Dusenburg – big wheels, long hood, short rear deck, and zero overhangs," says Lyons. One of GM's cars that Lyons thinks has addressed both safety engineer and designer wishes is the new 2010 Buick LaCrosse. "With LaCrosse, we moved the windshield farther forward, so we have this very beautiful shoulder line that remains intact through to the rear of the car." But just as designers struggled with new bumper laws in the early 1970s that saw cars festooned with battering-rams, designers have suffered through a few awkward years. Now they have whittled away at the safety requirements to get a car that's more attractive than, say, a refrigerator packing box. Even show cars today have to be more safety compliant.Gone are the days when flights of fancy could be rolled out under the auto show lights with little consideration for production. As such, most concepts are now designed to meet production car safety standards, even if they don't look like it. "Our cars at Detroit this year – the Cadillac XTS Platinum and GMC Graphite – are concepts, but they are also compliant with the new regs," says Lyons.

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