TOKYO (Aug. 31, 2005) - Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., announced today that it has begun operations at its newly constructed Nissan Advanced Crash Laboratory (NACL) located at the company's Oppama Proving Ground in Yokosuka City, 50 kilometers southwest of Tokyo. The 40,000-square-meter, state-of-the-art laboratory will be used for testing safety performance in vehicle-to-vehicle crashes and occupant protection performance in rollover accidents.
"We are very excited to have opened our second crash test facility in Japan," said Kimiyasu Nakamura, senior vice president at Nissan. "Nissan Advanced Crash Laboratory will go a long way to support the development of improved safety systems for Nissan's vehicles under our Safety Shield approach."
Safety Shield encompasses Nissan's safety-related technologies that address both accident prevention and management. Under this approach, which was introduced in fiscal year 2004, Nissan believes that the driver is key to improved safety when it comes to helping to prevent an accident from occurring. Nissan's focus is on how the company can best support the driver with technology that helps him or her avoid an accident or minimizes damage in case of a crash.
Nissan's other crash test facility is located at the Nissan Technical Center in Atsugi, Kanagawa and is used for conducting vehicle tests using rigid or movable barriers.
At NACL, tests designed to reproduce vehicle-to-vehicle crashes can be conducted over a wide range of collision angles from 85 to 185 degrees in 5-degree increments, in addition to frontal collisions at 180 degrees and side collisions at 90 degrees.
Oblique-angle crashes between vehicles traveling in the same direction can also be reproduced at seven different collision angles of 5, 10, 15, 30, 45, 60 and 75 degrees.
At NACL, Nissan can also evaluate occupant protection performance in four types of rollover crash modes through a dolly rollover test*1, a trip-over test*2, a ditch rollover test*3 and a corkscrew test*4. The tests were developed by Nissan based on real-world accident analysis.
Long-term commitments to safety:
Nissan has previously adopted technologies to help achieve better compatibility*5 such as its unique high-strength Zone Body*6 construction. The latest version has been used on Nissan's models since 2002 with the release of the present generation of the March compact car.
Nissan has set a goal of halving the number of traffic fatalities or serious injuries involving Nissan vehicles in Japan by 2015 compared with 1995. As of 2003, Nissan had reduced the number of fatal and serious injuries by 22% compared with 1995, indicating that steady progress is being made toward the attainment of its goal.
*1Dolly rollover test: Simulates a rollover curb impact crash with the vehicle in a fixed position on a dolly.
*2Trip-over test: This test simulates an accident where a vehicle spins and slips sideways until it comes in contact with a curb or some other formation that causes it to roll over.
*3Ditch rollover test: This test simulates an accident where a vehicle leaves the road, travels down a sloped embankment at an oblique angle and rolls over.
*4Corkscrew test: This test simulates an accident where the wheels on one side run up on the center divider or some other structure, causing the vehicle to tip and roll over.
*5Compatibility: This refers to helping to improve the protection of the vehicle's occupant while reducing damage toward the occupants of the other vehicle.
*6Zone Body: The name of the high-strength body construction that Nissan has introduced since 1997. It combines a high-strength cabin (occupant zone) with impact-absorbing body structures (crushable zones) to help protect the vehicle's occupants.
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