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March 2008
Future of vehicle safety lies in crash prevention
Ronald Medford
Seat belts and other safety technologies have saved hundreds of thousands of lives on U.S. roadways since 1960. Tomorrow’s safety systems, particularly those that prevent crashes, will save many more, said Ronald Medford at the CTS Winter Luncheon. Their widespread deployment, however, hinges on a key question: What level of reliability will convince consumers the systems work and are worth the money—and persuade manufacturers to install them?
Medford is the senior associate administrator for vehicle safety with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). He was introduced by Max Donath, director of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Institute, which sponsored the luncheon February 13 in Minneapolis.
Traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 4 to 34 and play a prominent role in mortality at almost every age. “It is a significant public health problem,” Medford said.
Ninety percent of crashes in this country are related to driver behavior, with just two percent related to vehicles and eight percent to road surface. Vehicle safety systems that compensate for driver behavior—either by warning drivers of an impending crash or assuming control of the vehicle—are becoming more feasible thanks to new sensing systems and higher computational power, he said.
Some systems augment driver performance. Brake-assist technology, for example, detects how quickly a driver actuates the brake, evaluates the force applied, and adds more force in crash situations (which require more force than a driver may realize). Other examples being deployed and refined include night vision systems, area-specific warnings (such as for blind spots), and drowsydriving monitoring systems. (Lexus uses a camera that monitors the driver’s eyes, while Volvo’s approach monitors driving behavior and compares it against the driver’s recorded baseline.)
Other systems take control of the vehicle. A major development in this area is electronic stability control (ESC) for preventing rollovers. Rollovers account for 3 percent of all passenger vehicle crashes but 35 percent of occupant fatalities and 59 percent of SUV occupant deaths. “When [a rollover] happens, it’s severe and significant,” Medford said.
Mandated by Congress, NHTSA studied rollovers and enacted a regulation requiring ESC for all new vehicles by 2012. (Nine percent of SUVs sold today have ESC.) Manufacturers were supportive of the regulation, Medford said.
NHTSA’s preliminary analysis of ESC, using data from five states between 1997 and 2002, found a 35 percent reduction for single vehicle crashes for passenger cars and a 67 percent crash reduction for SUVs.
When crashes do occur, automatic collision notification (ACN) systems such as OnStar are increasingly available. Advanced ACN assesses crash severity and angle, providing better data to emergency responders and improving triage, Medford explained.
In longer term initiatives, NHTSA is working on ITS safety initiatives with the USDOT’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration. One research initiative is the Cooperative Intersection Collision Avoidance Systems (CICAS) program, of which the ITS Institute at CTS is a participant. CICAS brings together federal agencies, automobile manufacturers, and university transportation centers with the goal of developing new technologies to prevent collisions. The ITS Institute’s focus is on preventing crashes at rural highway intersections (see www.its.umn.edu).
Another research area is vehicle-infrastructure integration, which is intended to allow communication between the infrastructure and vehicles, and from vehicles to other vehicles.
Electronic stability control significantly reduces the number of rollover crashes.
For all these advanced technologies, Medford said, a continuing question is this: How much of the “safety function” can be taken from drivers without causing false reliance? “We have the capability to completely eliminate crashes…but we’re not ready for that,” he noted. Until we are, NHTSA will continue to evaluate technology effectiveness, help ensure minimum performance, educate consumers, encourage the car market where appropriate, and regulate where appropriate.
Many dealers don’t understand the technologies on their own lots, Medford added. Only 10 percent of salespeople know what ESC is, “even though it’s the most important technology after seat belts,” he said.
Medford also described a recent agreement that NHTSA signed with the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety to develop advanced alcohol-sensing technology. The five-year research and development effort is designed to create the capability to detect driver impairment before the vehicle can be operated. “It’s a tough effort and will need a lot of time and money, with a significant technical and public acceptance challenge,” he said.
Potential areas of promise include breath alcohol ignition interlock devices (used today for repeat offenders), tissue spectroscopy, transdermal detectors, ethanol vapor detectors, and ocular measures. Accuracy is key: any system must be reliable and accurate over the life of a vehicle. “We can’t have false positives,” Medford said. “The public won’t accept it.”