DOT Introduces Educational Campaign Focusing on Vehicle Safety Technologies
WASHINGTON — A vehicle safety technology program unveiled here Oct. 7 by the Department of Transportation and the National Safety Council emphasized features that are becoming as commonplace in commercial trucks as they are in passenger cars.
The education campaign was rolled out to highlight technologies that automatically stop a vehicle from drifting, brake the vehicle if they detect it is too close to another vehicle and monitor blind spots.
“We have entered a new era where we can focus on preventing crashes from ever occurring instead of just protecting occupants when crashes happen,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said.
The campaign includes a website, MyCarDoesWhat.org, with video demonstrations and public service announcements designed to raise awareness of the technologies.
Foxx noted that after a record-low highway fatality rate in 2014, the numbers are heading in the opposite direction this year.
Deborah Hersman, CEO of the National Safety Council, termed the 30,000 deaths on the roads each year “a public-health crisis,” making technology such as automatic emergency braking systems, blind spot monitors and lane departure systems essential to helping prevent the human errors that cause 90% of those fatalities.
“A lot of these technologies are transferable,” Hersman said. “They’re not just designed for passenger cars. Some of them have even broader application in commercial vehicles. We want consumers and we want professional drivers to know what’s in their vehicles.”
Hersman is a former chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board.
Foxx referenced the 1960s’ animated television show, “The Jetsons,” when citing the technological advances that Hersman termed “the stair steps to get us to autonomous vehicles.”
In conjunction with the University of Iowa’s Transportation and Vehicle Safety Program, DOT and the council demonstrated that the safety technologies worked in test runs in New York, Tampa, Florida, and rural Wyoming.
Mark Rosekind, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, echoed Hersman’s comment regarding commercial vehicles and drivers.
“There is an artificial distinction that gets made between light and heavy [vehicles],” Rosekind said. “In reality, these safety technologies [apply] across the fleet. We want [automatic emergency braking] equipment standard on all vehicles.”
But drivers are still critical to making these technologies work.
“The knowledge we bring to the driver’s seat often lags far behind the capabilities of the vehicles that we’re driving,” Rosekind said. “If drivers do not accept, understand and probably miss these technologies, we will miss the lifesaving opportunities.”
Hersman said that the safety council would welcome partnerships with groups such as American Trucking Associations to spread the message about the new safety technologies.
“Most people are aware of these features, but they don’t know exactly how they work,” Hersman said.
Anne Ferro, former administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, pointed out that all truckers learn to drive cars first.
“It can only help [truck drivers],” Ferro, CEO of the American Associations of Motor Vehicle Administrators, said in reference to the new technologies.
