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Our knowledge of vehicle behaviour and road safety systems was based at INRETS (Institut National de Recherche sur les Transports et leur Sécurité - National Research Institute on Transport and their Safety) on impact tests. A program was initiated on the modelling of the front compartment of a vehicle in the case of barrier impact tests. The model should allow us to enlarge the conclusion drawn from test results by extending the studies to different crash-test configurations. One dimensional lumped-mass model has been used for several years to simulate structural collapse in tests. The present paper describes tools which have been developed in order to use two or three dimensional lumped-mass models (in particular to study asymmetrical barrier impacts).