In The News
NTSB: Collision avoidance systems should be standard on cars, CMVs
WASHINGTON — The National Transportation Safety Board Monday outlined the life-saving benefits of currently available collision avoidance systems, and recommended that the technology become standard on all new passenger and commercial vehicles.
"You don't pay extra for your seatbelt," said Chairman Christopher A. Hart. "And you shouldn't have to pay extra for technology that can help prevent a collision altogether."
NTSB's special investigation report, "The Use of Forward Collision Avoidance Systems to Prevent and Mitigate Rear-End Crashes," stresses that collision avoidance systems can prevent or lessen the severity of rear-end crashes, thus saving lives and reducing injuries.
According to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, rear-end crashes kill about 1,700 people every year and injure half a million more. More than 80 percent of these deaths and injuries might have been mitigated had the vehicles been equipped with a collision avoidance system, the NTSB said.
Meritor WABCO, one of the nation's two large manufacturers of safety systems for commercial vehicles, immediately lauded the NTSB's recommendation.
"The recommendations are positively aligned with Meritor WABCO's mission to improve road safety for everyone," said Stephen Hampson, president and general manager, Meritor WABCO. "The proven performance of OnGuard collision mitigation systems since 2007 supports the NTSB report's conclusions."
The NTSB said it had made 12 recommendations over 20 years in favor of forward collision avoidance technologies, including 10 recommendations resulting from an earlier Special Investigation Report in 2001.
The progress on these recommendations, however, has been very limited, the NTSB said. The report notes that a lack of incentives and limited public awareness has stunted the wide adoption of collision avoidance technology.
Only four out of 684 passenger vehicle models in 2014 included a complete forward collision avoidance system as a standard feature. When these systems are offered as options, they are often bundled with other non-safety features, making the overall package more expensive.
"The promise of a next generation of safety improvements has been used too often to justify inaction," Hart said. "Because there will always be better technologies over the horizon, we must be careful to avoid letting perfection become the enemy of the good."
In the report, the NTSB recommends that manufacturers make collision avoidance systems standard equipment in newly manufactured vehicles, beginning with collision warning systems, and adding autonomous emergency braking once NHTSA completes standards for such braking systems.
Furthermore, the NTSB recommends that NHTSA develop tests and standards in order to rate the performance of each vehicle's collision avoidance systems and to incorporate those results into an expanded NCAP 5-star safety rating scale.
The NTSB is also issuing a companion Safety Alert for consumers and commercial fleet owners that urges them to consider vehicles with collision warning and autonomous emergency braking functions.
Meritor WABCO said reports from its Fleet Advisory Council indicated that installation of OnGuard could reduce the number of rear-end collisions by as much as 87 percent.
A NHTSA study by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute released in 2013 found that 20 percent of rear-end collisions involve stationary objects and 17 percent are in low-visibility conditions where robust and rapid system reaction is the most critical.
Meritor WABCO currently supplies OnGuard, a leading collision mitigation system for commercial vehicles in North America.
With more than 80,000 units installed, 27 billion road miles of service and a reorder rate of virtually 100 percent, fleets are increasingly welcoming this system's contribution to improved road safety and operating efficiency.
Meritor WABCO recently announced OnGuardACTIVE, its most advanced, all-season collision mitigation system for trucks and buses in North America. OnGuardACTIVE provides superior performance in poor visibility situations such as whiteouts, heavy rain, dense fog, blinding sunshine or nightime driving. The collision mitigation system alerts the driver to potentially critical driving situations via acoustic, visual and haptic signals. If the vehicle operator fails to take corrective action, OnGuardACTIVE delivers active braking to mitigate or prevent impending rear-end collisions with moving, stopping and stationary vehicles.
Meritor WABCO said the NTSB report reiterated the organization's earlier recommendation to NHTSA to develop stability control system performance standards for all commercial motor vehicles and buses with a gross vehicle weight rating greater than 10,000 pounds, regardless of whether the vehicles are equipped with a hydraulic or a pneumatic brake system.
The full NTSB report is available at http://ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Pages/SIR1501.aspx.
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