Structural integrity is the foundation of the AutoSafe™ system. This section evaluates the vehicle’s ability to preserve survival space, control cabin deformation, and minimize injury metrics across multiple crash configurations—including frontal, side, rear and rollover impacts.
All assessments use high-speed sensors, ATDs (anthropomorphic test devices), cabin deformation mapping, and intrusion measurements to ensure real-world crash robustness.
These evaluations form the structural backbone of the AutoSafe™ rating, ensuring that every vehicle is judged not only on how it withstands a collision, but also on how it manages energy, protects different occupant sizes, and maintains a stable survival space under realistic crash pulses. Together, these criteria provide a transparent and engineering-driven foundation for understanding true crashworthiness performance.
Frontal, Side, Rear & Rollover Protection forms the core of AutoSafe™ evaluation, ensuring that occupant survival space is maintained, cabin deformation is minimized, and injury metrics are assessed against the acceptance limits defined by the future released protocol.
Frontal Impact
Frontal impact testing evaluates how effectively the vehicle preserves the occupant survival space during offset and full-width collisions. It also examines how the restraint systems— including airbags and belt pretensioners—manage crash forces and respond at precise timing intervals to protect different occupant sizes.
Detailed analyses cover A-pillar behaviour, steering column movement and footwell deformation. This is considered one of the most critical domains within structural safety evaluation.
- Offset deformable-barrier method under the future released protocol
- Full-width rigid-barrier method under the future released protocol
- A-pillar integrity & steering column displacement
- Footwell deformation and pedal intrusion mapping
- Airbag + belt pretensioner deployment timing
Side Impact
Side impact testing focuses on thoracic, abdominal and pelvic protection in lateral collisions. The combination of mobile deformable barrier and side-pole impacts allows AutoSafe™ to evaluate how well the vehicle structure and curtain airbags protect occupants when struck from the side.
These crash modes involve high injury potential due to minimal crumple zone, making this a high-severity risk area.
- Near-side moving-barrier method under the future released protocol
- Narrow-object side method under the future released protocol
- B-pillar & door intrusion mapping
- Curtain airbag coverage & timing
- Rib, abdomen & pelvis injury metrics
Rear Impact & Whiplash
Rear impact evaluations assess neck injury risks using dynamic sled simulations that replicate real-world rear-end collision pulses. Head restraint geometry, seatback strength and rebound behaviour are all analysed to ensure proper occupant kinematics are maintained.
This domain holds particular importance for family cars and daily-use vehicles where low-speed rear collisions are common, making it an essential consumer-safety category.
- Neck Injury Criterion (NIC) evaluation
- Head-to-headrest geometry verification
- Seatback strength & deformation limits
- Rebound kinematics during sled tests
Rollover Protection
Rollover protection evaluates cabin integrity during overturn or multi-roll events. The focus is on roof strength, pillar deformation and the vehicle’s ability to maintain survivable space for all occupants.
Testing also examines curtain-airbag deployment, occupant retention, glazing, belt performance and survival space. A static roof-load test alone is not a complete dynamic rollover demonstration.
- Roof crush strength under sustained loads
- Survival space preservation in rollover
- A/B-pillar deformation analysis
- Curtain airbag deployment duration
EV Structural Safety
EV structural evaluation focuses on the crash protection of high-voltage battery systems. Battery enclosure integrity, intrusion limits and mounting-point robustness are examined across frontal, side and underride crash modes.
Structural evidence may examine deformation, intrusion and protection around the installed energy system. Post-impact electrical or fuel isolation and energy-containment scoring belong to D07 and are not counted again in D03-D04.
- Battery cage intrusion protection
- Structural deformation and intrusion around the installed energy system
- D07 cross-reference for post-impact isolation and containment
- Pyrofuse activation verification
Scoring Summary
This page groups proposed Domain D03 (140 points) and Domain D04 (110 points), for 250 of the proposed 1,000 points. Class assignment also depends on every-domain floors, mandatory gates and class-specific requirements.
- Cabin intrusion mapping across all major crash modes
- Injury metrics and acceptance limits specified by the future released protocol
- Restraint-system timing and algorithm performance
- Structural consequences around the installed energy system; isolation and containment remain D07-owned
Characteristics of High Performance
Vehicles achieving top structural safety scores typically exhibit:
- Very low cabin intrusion in frontal, side and rollover tests
- Stable, predictable deformation paths with strong passenger cell integrity
- Consistently low injury metrics for occupants in multiple seating positions
- Effective coordination of airbags, pretensioners and load limiters
- Structural protection around the applicable energy system without duplicating D07 isolation evidence
Next in the AutoSafe™ Standard
Occupant Diversity & Child Protection
Explore how AutoSafe™ evaluates adult and child safety using advanced ATDs and high-resolution injury metrics.
IAF AUTOSAFE First Edition
Draft for Technical Review. Consult the full standard for the twelve-domain schedule, evidence rules, mandatory gates and proposed class thresholds.