Car buyers to benefit from global safety strategy

By Russell Williamson

Indonesian car buyers will benefit as vehicle manufacturers move closer to developing common worldwide crash safety standards.

The move to a global safety strategy denotes carmakers and governments' aims to reduce a global road toll of more than 500,000 people per year.

The pursuit of common standards was one issue discussed at an international safety conference in Melbourne, Australia, earlier this month.

Top vehicle engineers and designers from throughout the world met to discuss the future of automotive safety at the 15th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles.

With increasing development of world cars to be sold in different markets across the globe, the conference focused on harmonizing world automotive safety standards.

Indonesian consumers are only just beginning to benefit from advances in safety technology, such as air bags and antilock brakes which are slowly filtering down into smaller, cheaper cars.

Although they have been available in luxury cars for some time, such as Mercedes-Benz and BMWs, they have recently been added to both Opel's Optima and Toyota Astra's Corolla.

The benefits of an increasingly global car manufacturing industry and common safety standards would see further advances in safety technology make their way into the Indonesian cars sooner than previously experienced.

Up until recently, many carmakers used developing nations as dumping grounds for cheaper, older, less safe and less technologically-advanced cars.

However, many are now realizing the significant cost of road deaths in both human terms and financial terms and are working to ensure all consumers worldwide reap the benefits of safer cars.

Speaking at the conference opening, the administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of United States (NHTSA), Dr. Ricardo Martinez, said some progress had already been made on the issue.

He said meetings with various European safety agencies had led to the tabling of several goals for compatible international crash data collection and analysis.

This would, he said, aid the development of "harmonized regulation through mutual research" and help to reduce the global death toll from vehicle crashes.

In order to establish worldwide safety standards, he said there were three processes which needed to be tackled.

The first of these was a greater sharing of crash data and analysis between organizations to obtain a greater understanding of what causes crashes and how to reduce injuries.

While the most visible data collection process for this is seen in carmakers laboratory crash testing, greater depth of knowledge is often achieved through analysis of real life crashes.

Mercedes-Benz has been conducting real-life crash analysis for 25 years with the results highly evident in the levels of safety in Mercedes cars.

Since 1969, accident researchers at the company's headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, have analyzed and reconstructed more than 2,700 crashes.

By examining the evidence at the scene of a crash and reconstructing the sequence of events, body work damage and injuries to occupants on a computer, the researchers are able to produce a three-dimensional representation of the accident's course.

This information is then used to develop new technologies in occupant protection such as air bags and increasing the structural integrity of the cars, and developing new crash tests which simulate real-life accidents better.

Mercedes claims that since it began analysis of real life crashes, the risk of being seriously injured in an accident in a Mercedes car has fallen by more than half.

With human error being the cause of more than 90 percent of all crashes, it is also important to ensure that human behavior is looked into.

As part of this process, Dr. Martinez said the NHTSA was establishing a state-of-the-art driving simulator in the U.S. that would be able to analyze driver behavior under a wide range of conditions.

He said the simulator would provide information and research that will be available to other world safety research bodies. It is expected to be operational by 1999.

With a greater understanding of the causes of crashes, carmakers and governments will then be able to develop tests for vehicles which are most appropriate to reduce injuries.

The other significant process in developing common world automotive safety standards is through the biennial Enhanced Safety of Vehicles conferences, being the premier forum for exchange and dissemination of information.

It brings together safety engineers working in diverse areas, such as advanced occupant protection systems, collision avoidance systems, frontal and side impact protection, biomechanics and crash test dummy designs and data collection and analysis.

This year, more than 230 papers were delivered to about 600 delegates during the four-day event.

In addition to focussing on safety standards, these conferences also provide a forum for discussing new technologies being developed for crash avoidance and occupant protection.

While many carmakers continue to examine the opportunities for improved frontal impact protection through advanced occupant protection systems, the focus is turning towards side impact and roll-over protection and collision avoidance systems.

The head of Mercedes-Benz Accident Research, Dr. Falk Zeidler, said the development of air bags had almost reached its zenith with the arrival of "smart" bags.

Dr. Zeidler said Mercedes has already started installing smart bags in the recently-launched SLK roadster.

The sensor which operates the passenger-side air bag automatically detects whether a passenger is in the seat or whether a child safety seat has been installed and will determine whether the air bag should be deployed.

Dr. Zeidler said Mercedes was also working on crash avoidance systems, including driver drowsiness detection systems. Such systems would be in vehicles before the end of the decade.

He said electronic systems for crash avoidance would be the next big step in reducing car crashes.

Unlike the slow flow-down of air bags from luxury cars to the mass-market vehicles, avoidance systems would find their way into volume production sooner, he said.

At the safety exhibition, which ran in conjunction with the conference, Honda's Advanced Safety Vehicle (ASV-3) offered a glimpse of what consumers can expect in the not-too-distant future.

The ASV-3 is Honda's third generation of safety show cars, with the first being seen in 1991.

The first ASV was designed to show off technology which could be used to predict and prevent crashes by using an intelligent navigation system.

This system included such things as an optimum route guidance program which would direct the driver on the safest course through traffic, an approaching corner warning function and an active headlight system which would move the headlights to enable the driver to see around bends in the road.

Also incorporated into the ASV-1 was an anti-dozing function to alert drivers when they were losing concentration and an automatic accident reporting function which uses cellular phone technology to alert emergency services of a car crash.

ASV-2 moved even further into crash avoidance by using radar technology to warn drivers when they were too close to another car and apply the brakes automatically if a collision was imminent.

ASV-3 takes the vehicle into a different area but one of vital importance: reducing injuries for pedestrians in car crashes.

By using a more advanced active headlight system, drivers of the ASV-3 would be able to see pedestrians more clearly at night.

Also, by installing a greater impact absorbing hood, bumper and A-pillars, the severity of pedestrian injuries can be reduced.

Mercedes and Honda are just two companies continuing to push the boundaries in safety developments for cars which in the longer term, will have enormous benefits for all road users.