I was reading some more of these pedestrian ratings, and no one does very well, which I understand (sort of), but most of the remarks say things like ``the bumper and leading edge of the bonnet were hard''. Duh. Are they supposed to be made of foam rubber? And, even if they were, how would that really help a 30 mph auto v. pedestrian accident?

Bumpers on some cars are effectively made of foam rubber with a think plastic skin already, for precisely this reason. There has been a lot of research that shows that you can dramatically reduce pedestrian injuries with redesigns to the front of the car, even in fairly high speed collisions.

The next generation of European cars will be starting to use the results of this research, by making the front ends of cars more deformable, changing the angle of hoods, leaving a larger gap between under hood components and the hood etc

The bits on the research I saw made a particular play on that last point. Apparantly lots of injuries occur as the nice bendy hood deforms as the pedestrian hits it, only to expose the solid immovable components beneath it.

They are even investigating airbags built into car hoods to protect pedestrians, which sounds kind of mad...

My boss reckons we should take the Russian tank armour approach to pedestrian protection and strap explosive charges to the pedestrians so that cars bounce off when they hit them ! (for those of you that don't know, the Russians developed "active" armour for their tanks, which were essentially an explosive charge fixed on the outside of the tank that deflected a shell when it hit the charge)