Bridgestone Presents Interior Motives Award

For a second successive year, Bridgestone has sponsored the ‘Best Safety Innovation’ category in an annual competition organised by Interior Motives magazine for automotive design students from around the world. Short-listed entries were unveiled at the Interior Motives Design Awards 2007 ceremony in Frankfurt’s Cocoon Club on 12 September, held in conjunction with the IAA 2007 international motor show.

The event began with an exhibition, where an audience of design industry VIPs and the press were able to view student designs and prototypes for the first time and meet the finalists themselves. The winners, selected by an international panel of industrial design judges, were then announced under ten design categories.

Topping the safety innovation category were Jaesang Lee, Yong-Won Lee and Jun-Hyung Park from Hongik University, Korea. The team’s striking personal mobility concept, branded as a Nissan ‘Uno’, is a futuristic transporter that houses single-seater personal mobility vehicles inside it, that deploy as the vehicle approaches its destination.

The team’s idea provides both safety and comfort for passengers travelling at high speeds in the security of the transporter while maintaining this safety and mobility after passengers are deployed in their low speed personal vehicles. As passengers return to the main transporter, the distance between front and rear axles of the personal vehicles decreases, providing a natural, more comfortable seating position within the communal transporter.

Dr Rainer Schieben, Managing Director of Bridgestone Germany, presented the cash award, commenting: “I am positive that the exposure provided by winning this prestigious award will help our young people find employment that makes the most of their undoubted talents. Young designers are of great value to our industry and safety is at the centre of the Bridgestone corporate ethos,” he added. “Road traffic injuries kill at least 3000 people, including 500 children, every day. Encouraging talented designers to look at creative new ideas for making tomorrow’s vehicles safer is one more way for us to play a part in reducing this toll.”