Active Steering Is Next Big Leap in Truck Safety, Suppliers Say
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The next stage in the evolution of active safety technology for trucks could bring increased automation to the vehicle, but the human operator will continue to play a central role in fleet safety, technology suppliers said.
The next big leap for active safety systems will be the addition of active steering, said Alan Korn, director of advanced brake systems and integration at Meritor Wabco, said here Feb. 29 at American Trucking Associations’ Executive Leadership Forum.
“In certain environments, the driver is going to cede complete control of the vehicle over to the control system,” he said, but the driver still will be in the seat and ready to take over.
Korn predicted that fully autonomous trucks without drivers will not be available in the near future.
At the same time, video-based safety systems can work in tandem with active safety technologies to further reduce risk and address the human element of road safety, said Kara Kerker, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Lytx, provider of the DriveCam program.
She said onboard video technology works “hand in glove” with active safety systems, such as electronic stability control, collision mitigation and lane departure warnings.
In fact, video can reveal problems with the way some drivers interact with active safety systems.
Examples include drivers who develop “alarm fatigue” and begin to disregard the beeps in the cab generated by collision mitigation and lane departure warning systems, Kerker said.
She also showed video of a driver reading a newspaper while driving down the road and using the active warning system’s alerts as a guide to steer.
Looking ahead to the next wave of active safety technology, Korn said it will be important for automated steering systems to provide a sufficient payback to the fleets that invest in the technology.
At the same time, liability potentially could shift from drivers and carriers to truck makers and suppliers if a crash occurs during automated control, he said.
“We live in very exciting times,” Korn said. “We can do almost anything with technology today, but we have to make sure we do the right thing and provide a payback.”
Korn also said today’s active safety systems have their origins in anti-lock braking, which added electronics to the braking system and provided a foundation for further technology development.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration mandated anti-lock braking systems on new tractors in 1997, followed by trailers and straight trucks in 1998.
“It gave us a great platform to develop from because every truck had a system on it,” Korn said.
Electronic stability control, which is designed to reduce the likelihood of rollovers and loss-of-control crashes, soon will become a mandated technology as well.
NHTSA last year issued a final rule that will require ESC on new tractors by August 2017.
Other modern active safety technologies include collision mitigation systems, which use forward-looking radar sensor technology and active braking to prevent or mitigate rear-end collisions, and lane departure systems, which track and project the lane ahead of the truck and provide audible warnings when the truck drifts from the lane.
Electronic stability control, collision mitigation and lane departure are already mandated technologies in Europe, Korn said.
