Look Who’s Talking: An Automotive Safety Future

Posted on Oct 27, 2015 in Technology | 1 comment

It was 50 years ago that a book authored by lawyer and public safety activist Ralph Nader caused people to observe the automobile as a risky piece of everyday life. Titled Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader’s book shined a light on various issues of vehicle safety including the rear-engined Chevrolet Corvair. Though the Corvair’s stability was actively disputed by the auto manufacturer and even in court, Ralph Nader did shine light on other aspect of unsafe automotive design practices. Since 1966, NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) has committed itself to assure automotive safety standards would be enacted and policed.

For those involved in a serious car accident, survival of all is the desired outcome. According to a 2009 Traffic Safety Facts Annual Report, the measures to protect road users appears to be making a massive impact on what has been a very mobile public in the United States. In 1980, there was an all-time high total of 51,091 deaths measured in United States car crashes leading to a fatality rate of 35.16 per 100,000 motorists. In 2008, the fatality had dropped by almost 28 percent even while there are 50,000,000 more licensed drivers on the roadways compared to 1980.

While the survivability rates in United States car crashes allows more and more individuals to handle post-collision such as a compensation calculator, the loss of lives is still a solid reason why the NHTSA has continued to press safety for vehicles and roadway. Already successfully pushing the mandate for electronically stability control to be fitted to all production vehicles, the NHTSA is now assessing other electronic technologies. Testing the effectiveness of lane departure and other crash detection assist systems, the newest line of vehicle occupant protection is going to involve more active roles for computer-aided accident avoidance.

Lane migration and crash avoidance systems are becoming the latest step forward in on-board, high-tech automobile safety. One of the more monumental systems introduced to production is was the Full Auto Brake system available on the Volvo S60. The NHTSA will be studying the effectiveness of this or similar collision avoidance systems in order to create standards and testing criteria which can be used to evaluate future vehicles.

With 53 percent of fatal car accidents involving impact with another vehicle, automotive engineers and computer technologists realize the newest layer in accident avoidance is to educate the cars. Explored by many auto manufacturers like the Ford Motor Company, vehicle to vehicle communication technology expands electronic assist programs to effectively react to each other. Convening automotive and transportation minds in two California events almost two months ago, Ford exhibited vehicle communication technology using in-car Wi-Fi to relay driving information. Having the ability of perhaps relieving traffic congestion and better optimization of fuel consumption, a Wi-Fi enabled vehicle communication system is also has potentially positive implications for safer roads.

Allowing vehicles to notify following vehicles of trouble areas, car-to-car communication solutions gives vehicles a chance to not just react but anticipate changes or hazards one the approaching roads. Ford and the NHTSA is also bullish on the usage of active vehicle communications to greatly reduce drunk driving (an impairment connected to a recorded 32 percent of all traffic fatalities in 2009) In a 2010 report published by the NHTSA, vehicle communication could prevent up to 81 percent of impaired driving. Through further research by the NHTSA, the agency will study how vehicle communications could be structured safely and effectively on future roads.

With no amount of whiplash compensation around to overcome the shocking and horrible memories of a major traffic accident where injury is involved, the work of auto manufacturers and the NHTSA has insured fewer of those collisions ending in fatality. Continuing work in the arena of safety will work assuring more people will realize the adage “the only good accident is an accident that never happened.”