Cars In The Future : Active Safety
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Active safety is the field of vehicle engineering where there will likely be the most changes and new technologies released in the future. This will change the way we drive as the interactions between the car and the environment and the car and the driver will increase.
Active safety is designed to reduce the occasions of human error, in order to understand this goal further; the various types of human error must be defined, rather than using the phrase loosely.
A study was conducted in 1990 that looked at human behaviour factors using a Driver Behaviour Questionnaire. This analysis sorted human errors into three distinct categories depending on the behavioural reason why the error was made
- Lapses. A lapse is an error that is more down to absent-mindedness than other reasons. For example, failing to turn off at the correct junction on a motorway.
- Errors. An error arises due to the failure of a driver to process all of the information available, or make best use of it. This is dependent on the cognitive ability of a driver.
- Violations. Violations are the result of a deliberate breaking of the regulatory system, which has been put in place to prevent accidents, in this case, traffic law.
It should be no surprise, especially to those from other areas of Health and Safety, that a violation error – i.e. the deliberate breaking of the code of behaviour which have been put in place to secure a safe environment – is most likely to lead to an accident.
Active safety fits into this context as a way of reducing the number of both errors, and violations, and making drivers actions on the road more predictable to other road users.
Road Safety can benefit from active safety, as
a) it is a way of alerting the driver to the environment around the vehicle and preventing lapses.
b) it can correct driver mistakes and prevent errors from occurring.
c) It is a way for engineering to influence safer driver decisions and behaviours to prevent violations of traffic law.
The current generation of active safety systems work by making crashes avoidable once an error has been made. They do not prevent driver error, but they do increase the chance that a driver can recover from their error with less serious consequences.
Future active safety systems will provide the driver with more information in order to prevent the error from occurring. They are intended to support a driver’s mental thought process when encountering a hazard and help him or her decide on appropriate action sooner.
The ultimate aim of this type of active safety is automation and to ensure that the vehicle responds in the safest and most predictable manner, whether the driver is involved in the process or not.
These distinctions of when and to what extent the vehicle takes control or supports the driver is important when looking at the wider effects of active safety, such as how much the driver will rely on it, how the Human/Machine Interface works, and what the benefits to society of the systems will be.
Active safety systems need to be looked at and evaluated, to decide the best way to implement them. The decisions must be based on sound scientific evidence and reviewed when suitable real world data becomes available to ensure that the systems are having the effect that they were intended to.
Although the introduction of older active safety systems such as ABS has been slow, the take up of new technology in all fields as a society has quickened and looks set to continue this way into the future. It is likely that future active safety systems will integrate themselves into vehicles quicker in future.
Active safety systems are now firmly established into the car market and in industry as a way of reducing the number of accidents
Behavioural adaptation is a concern about how any benefits brought by safety systems are offset by drivers taking more risk to make up for their increased safety. This is not a fault of the safety system, but with the knowledge about the engineering.
Of course it would be wrong to suggest that drivers will instantly adapt to new technology by compensating for the potential reduction in risk, or by immediately using the technology in a dangerous manner. It cannot be assumed that the human element will re-introduce risk, it will be the case that some drivers will learn how to optimally use the system safely.
Drivers can be encouraged to behave and use technology in a safer manner by better education, training, and publicity about what these systems do and why they are there – influencing a drivers attitudes and behaviours towards vehicle safety.
The system itself can also be designed to help the driver achieve the safety benefits of a system intuitively.
This highlights the ever-increasing interaction between vehicle technology and the driver and the fact that it needs to be considered more. Even the safest of vehicles is dependant upon how the driver uses the on board safety systems.
The current generation of Active Safety Systems – in the main – play a part when all of the factors that would lead to a crash have arisen and placed the driver in an already dangerous situation, rather than preventing the dangerous situation in the first place. They help a driver get out of a dangerous situation that factors (including the driver themselves) have created.
They work by improving the stability of a vehicle under different conditions, and mean that the forces needed to create a skid will be increased.
Although some systems such as Electronic Stability Control are becoming more common on new cars, and others such as ABS are now standard, there is a lack of public understanding about what the technology does and it’s availability. This needs to be addressed to get quicker benefits from proven safety systems.
A recent poll by Bosch showed that only 18% of the population knew about ABS and only 1% knew of ESP, and similar figures were found in a recent SMMT poll, which also revealed that only 42% of people could name an active safety system of a vehicle.
Addressing the lack of public awareness needs to be seen as a priority in order to help current active safety systems spread through the vehicle fleet, and make a contribution to reducing the number of casualties in the near future.
The Future of Active Safety
Active safety to prevent accidents is due to increase rapidly into the future, and it has potential to do this in many more ways than it currently does. This section will describe where and how a vehicle will assist a driver in future, by referring to the phases of the Mercedes-Benz Integrated Safety Concept, previously mentioned in section 1.4.
During normal driving, vehicles can make the driver’s thought processes easier. Satellite navigation and well-designed Human Machine Interfaces will prevent drivers from becoming overly distracted and prevent an excessive overload of information on the driver. This will allow more driver time to be dedicated towards the primary task of driving the vehicle. These forms of technology will prevent a driver from getting into hazardous circumstances from which an accident could emerge.
Radar is capable of monitoring the road environment and dangers that may be present around a vehicle. This comprehensive picture of the road around the car can be fed back to the driver by many methods to inform his or her decisions. Radar systems are designed to complement driver observations rather than to replace them.
By providing information about the vehicles surroundings, the technology can provide a reduction in accidents during the pre crash phase. This is when all the circumstances for a collision have arisen, but there are still actions that the driver can take to avoid making an emergency manoeuvre or being involved in the crash.
The warning phase leading up to a crash is involved with providing drivers information about hazards in order to assist the driver’s decisions. This not only concerns itself with augmenting the driver’s observations – for example by alerting the driver to vehicles in the blind spot – but also improving the drivers awareness of the situation around the vehicle by means of radar and infrared.
The assistant phase is when the driver has failed to respond to a hazard effectively and it now becomes a risk of a collision. It is in this phase that the driver would usually respond to a hazard and systems to assist the driver in doing this are found on modern vehicles – examples of technology and equipment to help in this phase would be stability control systems, tyres, and Brake Assist.
In the further future, it is likely that the vehicle will use the information that it has gathered from the warning phase to intervene and prevent an accident. Adaptive Cruise Control and Lane Departure Warning Systems are early examples of systems that could be utilised for this purpose following further development.
The final influence that a vehicle can have on an accident before it occurs is the pre-crash phase, and this is a combination of active and passive safety. There are many ways that a vehicle can use the data gathered before the crash through sensors and active safety systems. The result will be that the passive safety systems respond in ways dependent on the circumstances of the crash and the occupant.
Early applications of automotive radar systems are currently working their way into the market, and there are two systems that can be found on some modern vehicles
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