Quote:
Originally Posted by MikkiJayne
Fair point, but in that case it seems odd for the NHTSA to be reverse-engineering someone else's product, since Audi would have done all this themselves before production started. I thought the NHTSA's remit would be to test products for consumer safety, but perhaps it goes further than that?
|
It is a bit odd for sure and Audi would have done some testing but it's unknown what and how much and if they would share or sell any of their data to others. This test is done in 1998 on a chassis that started selling in 1994. So Audi would have done tests a lot earlier, it takes time to get final touches and set up production lines so maybe 1992-1993. Computers, software, cameras would have been a lot less capable 5-6 earlier. Why would NHTSA do such a test remains unknown but to me it seems that only need for the level of details they have gone is to either to create models for 3D crash simulation software or to test/verify them. Maybe commissioned by third party software company or maybe even Audi themselves to use for future designing.
I am going back to video again and to check if there are any comments on it to give more clues