Softer landing

New car styling is moving quickly towards high-waisted doors and huge side roof pillars specifically to provide more side impact protection.

And there is also allowance being made for the differing heights of cars and four-wheel drives with the latter featuring less aggressive and lower frontal areas to minimise side impact "intrusion" in a collision with a smaller passenger car.

But the real challenge is to make a car that minimises injury to pedestrians in the awful event of an impact.

It seems an almost insurmountable problem considering the size, weight and speed of the "objects" involved.

But car manufacturers and designers are rising to the challenge.

Citroen's new C4 is an example of the way things are going.

It's a small/medium car and the front has been designed as much for aesthetics as for pedestrian safety.

The front bumper area is rounded off and extends quite low to spread any impact force with a pedestrian's leg over a larger area.

The C4's leading edge is all of relatively soft plastic with yielding structures beneath.

The bonnet is thin aluminium sheet and engine components, "hard parts" are well down in the engine bay and away from danger.

The bonnet is raked from the front up to the windscreen which is raked at almost the same angle as the bonnet once again to minimise blunt impact with a pedestrian.

The front mudguards are in soft plastic.

The mirrors have rounded leading edges and fold when hit. The only glass at the front of the car is the windscreen. Headlights and all brightwork the badges and grille are plastic.There is no protruding radio aerial and even the door handles are recessed.

Ford has taken matters a little further with a spring loaded bonnet on a specially developed Focus model.

The bonnet springs up about 20cm acting as a "pillow" in the event of a pedestrian collision. The system has not been broadly adopted on production cars at this stage but other elements of pedestrian safety adorn many other cars.

Sophisticated computers will soon be used to help either avoid a pedestrian collision or to adjust parts of the car instantaneously to minimise harm.

Pedestrian airbags are a possibility in the future.

In the meantime, it would pay dividends to invest in better education programs for pedestrians to stop some of the suicidal behaviour that takes place.

Disobeying red lights, jaywalking, walking on to the road from between parked cars or from behind vans, trucks and buses, walking onto the road when intoxicated, simply not paying attention or having compact audio headphones on all, heighten the risk to pedestrians.