Onboard Safety: Hedging Your Bets

There’s a definite allure to the consumer side of the Intelligent Transportation Systems movement. The same names that adorn stereo equipment at the neighborhood Future Shop are all over the ITS road map: Dephi, Sony, Clarion, Pioneer-all are working on gadgets designed not only to help guide you from A to B, but to read your e-mail back to you or tell you about that two-car collision 15 klicks up the highway.

But on the commercial vehicle side, new safety-related technology is giving ITS a greater sense of purpose.

“Governments know that some pretty amazing technology already exists right now,” says Joe Lam, chairman of ITS Canada, a sort of liaison between industry and regulators on ITS issues. “They’re trying to figure out what to do with it. Should they mandate it? Study it some more? I think, quite prudently, they want to partner with vehicle manufacturers to ensure that what’s on the drawing boards and in the R&D labs will work in practical application on the highway.”

Over the next three years, truckmakers Freightliner Corp., Mack Trucks, and Volvo Trucks North America will receive grants from the U.S. government to lead tests of several high-tech safety systems. They will focus on ways to prevent vehicle rollovers, rear-end collisions, and roadway-departure collisions, as well as on braking and hazard-warning devices.

The companies, along with the Minnesota Dept. of Transportation, will split grants totaling $12.7 million US under the U.S. DOT’s Intelligent Vehicle Initiative (IVI), a program intended to accelerate private-sector work on high-tech safety systems.

The grants will be combined with $7.7 million from corporate partners involved in the projects. Freightliner will spearhead the rollover-warning system. The company has a head start: starting next fall, it plans to offer its Roll Advisor and Control system as a standard feature on Century S/T models and an option on all other air-braked vehicles from Freightliner Corp.: Freightliner, Sterling, American LaFrance fire apparatus and Thomas-Built buses.

The Roll Advisor and Control has a dual function: warning the driver of conditions that might lead to a rollover and, if the three-stage warnings are ignored and the wheels start to lose contact with the pavement, initiating a de-activation of the throttle and application of the engine retarder. It uses capacity on the anti-lock braking system electronic control unit, some additional software, and the addition of accelerometers to measure the lateral forces on the truck. The accelerometers are very small and likely will be fitted into the ABS ECU. As the system detects high cornering forces, it flashes a series of warnings on a display. If the ABS sensors detect differing wheel speeds together with the information from the accelerometers, the system knows a rollover is starting. At this point it commands the engine to reduce fuel and applies the engine brake, slowing the vehicle.

Volvo will lead tests of collision warning systems and an advanced braking system. Mack will test a system that detects a vehicle’s position in its lane on the highway and then warns the driver against drift.

The Minnesota Dept. of Transportation will lead a partnership that includes Navistar International and 3m to test a fleet of snowplows equipped with collision warning and lateral guidance devices. The lateral guidance system, designed by 3m, uses magnetic tape embedded in the road surface and a sensor on the vehicle to prevent the snowplow driver from drifting into the ditch during heavy snowstorms.

“These technologies are getting awfully good,” says John Collins, president and CEO of ITS America, the U.S. counterpart to ITS Canada. “But the cost is still prohibitive. Trucking companies won’t buy in unless a) they can see a payback from safety technology, perhaps through a system of tax or insurance incentives, or b) they’re required by government to use it. That’s why I’m encouraged about the truck OEMs taking the lead in these DOT trials. These systems need to be integrated with the vehicle in order to be both effective and affordable. The manufacturer is in the best position to do that, not government.”