Introducing New Active Safety, Safely
Return to Cars In The FutureThe generation of active safety systems – such as ESC and BA – which are currently starting to become firmly established into the car market, are the last generation that society can afford to be so laissez-faire in introducing. The next generation of systems, which can start to take a degree of control away from the driver may have implications that have not yet been fully understood.
Just because a safety measure should theoretically reduce the number of accidents if used in an idealistic manner, the argument doesn’t necessarily follow that this is what effect it will have on real world accident statistics.
Similarly, many of the systems that are currently marketed as driver comfort features and will evolve into advanced driver assistance systems, will also have an effect on driver’s behaviour and have the potential to be misused. Technology cannot be pigeonholed in this manner as the effects that it has on comfort and safety are interrelated.
It seems a fair hypothesis that drivers will expect more from the system than it can provide, in some circumstances, which will increase the accident risk of vehicles. It is also a concern that systems which take a degree of control away from the driver will make the driver more reliant on the system and complacent. We can see from the accelerator pedal and use of speed that drivers, whether by accident or purpose, can misuse the tools given to them. Drivers who have both good and poor spatial awareness need to be supported by the technology, and it should help them make the correct decisions.
Another danger of increased risk of crash is known as ‘driver underloading’. If a driver has less to do – one of the effects of automation – then they will be less able to respond when they are required to. Current automated systems still cannot detect when and where the errors of other drivers will occur, and it is left up to the driver to respond to these situations when they arise. If a driver is underloaded and less involved with the task of driving then they will be less alert to sudden changes in the road environment and less able to respond to them.
The consequences of slowly replacing the systems that a driver has control over with ones that a driver has to monitor needs to be looked at in depth before this type of system becomes common on vehicles. A recent study at Brunel University has highlighted the dangers of driver underloading, especially in novice drivers.
Systems that remove a driver’s input from steering the vehicle, or controlling it’s braking, will have a psychological effect and driver’s may believe that they are not travelling at high speed. Attention must also be paid to the increase in automation resulting in the removal of indicators that a person is engaged in driving.
Priorities for vehicle safety need to be set, and this debate needs to include the road safety community as a whole, to find out how the introduction of technology can add value to road safety work. The introduction of active safety needs to be integrated with road safety initiatives.
An interesting case study can be made of ABS, as it is the only new active safety system that is now fitted on the majority of the vehicle fleet, and which had assessments of it’s effectiveness prior to it’s widespread introduction. It is possible that there is much to learn.
There has been a great deal of debate over the extent to which ABS has reduced accidents, and the actual effect that it has had compared to the predicted effect.
However, the engineering benefits of ABS are clear, it has almost certainly improved a vehicles ability to brake capably and achieve shorter breaking distances in the real world compared to the same vehicle without ABS. This can be proved on the test track.
Early ABS also highlights a case where drivers may have benefited from understanding the feedback that the drivers receive upon its use. It is likely that some users will feel the brake pedal vibrating or pulsing when ABS is activated.
This can be an unfamiliar and maybe uncomfortable experience for a driver, and many drivers may react to this experience by taking their foot off the brake pedal, but it is proof that the ABS is working. The correct course of action is to keep your foot hard on the brakes.
If theoretical estimates of accident reduction do not translate into actual accident reduction then there must be another effect that was not taken into account in the methodology of the predictions.
The effect could be chiefly explained in two ways; firstly that the driver changed their behaviour in a negative manner, or secondly if the driver didn’t feel that the feedback received from the system was indicative of a safe action and therefore stopped using it. There may be measures that can be implemented to reduce these two effects and these must be an essential part of a strategy of implementing active safety features.
It is also highly important in vehicle safety policy to prioritise systems depending on their proven potential to reduce the number of accidents and injury.
It is important to remember that the benefits of each safety system cannot simply be added. Generally there are many factors which will cause an accident, and the prevention of one may mitigate the accident, for example, it is not hard imagine an injury in an accident which may have been prevented if either a seat belt reminder system, ISA, or ESC had been fitted to a vehicle.
However, some systems will have a greater sphere of influence and can make a contribution in a larger number of accidents and injuries, these are the systems which must be identified and supported by policy.
When introducing a mandatory technology, standards should be set which measure the performance of that technology, rather than the specification that a particular ‘type’ of technology is used.
We see this approach illustrated in the field of passive safety, where safety criterion for the protection of the occupant is set and it is left to the vehicle engineers how to achieve that level of protection. In this way innovation is allowed, but there also is a measurable outcome.
This is an especially pertinent point when considering Brake Assist - which may be made mandatory by the most recently proposed EC Pedestrian Protection Regulation - and ESC - in which a similar suggestion was made by the high level EC CARS21 report. Rather than specifying these technologies without a definition of what the technologies are, braking and stability performance standards could be set. If equally good solutions to improve a vehicles braking and stability can be found without using Brake Assist and ESC then there is no logical reason why not to allow it.
It is important when setting minimum performance standards that they are relevant to the real world.
During the introduction of new technologies, research must be conducted into the length of the introduction process, and what the effects will be of having vehicles on the road both with and without the technology. New technology does take time to filter through the whole vehicle fleet and this process may introduce an accident risk during the crossover period. Ways of reducing this risk need to be looked at, including whether financial incentives could be used to encourage take up of new technology. This could either be done through the Government offering lower levels of taxation, based on the benefit of the technology to society, or insurance companies offering lower premiums based on the risk reduction seen from the technologies use.
Maintenance issues need to be looked at too. The MOT Test, which ensures the roadworthy conditions of the vehicle, could be used to check that the systems are maintained to standards. Recent and forthcoming improvements to the MOT test – such as Automated Test Lanes (ATL) – have sped up the process of conducting an MOT and will be much more commonplace by the time advanced driver assistance systems are introduced.
Evaluation of the technologies needs to take a prominent role in the introduction of active safety systems, much like it does in road safety initiatives to the point where many consider it as the ‘fourth E’ (alongside Education, Engineering and Enforcement), and it is essential that this is also how vehicle safety progresses into the future.
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