A method for multi-criteria evaluation of the complex safety characteristic of a road vehicle

During the recent years, car makers intensively develop and implement systems of active, passive, post-accident, environmental and fire safety of road vehicles. These devices and systems improve the safety but complicate the design and increase the cost of maintaining the vehicle in the operative condition. That is why there is necessity to evaluate the road vehicle as to the efficiency of operation regarding a number of complex safety characteristics. Solution to this task should be based on evaluating the (relative) importance of particular values for every characteristic considered to be a separate criterion of safety. In order to do that, we need to formulate a system of values for safety characteristics of the road vehicle and develop a formalized mechanism to assess the relative importance of every criterion in the form of a method for multi-criteria evaluation of the complex characteristic of road vehicle safety.