Developing ICT for Vehicular Safety

Source: "Vehicle-safety systems: Stopping in a hurry," The Economist, December 11th 2008.

The Economist also has an article describing systems being developed, primarily in Europe, to use ICT to monitor driving threats, issue warnings and even take control from the driver of a vehicle to avoid or minimize an accident.

These so-called “intelligent” vehicle-safety systems have the potential to make roads a lot safer, according to a new study by VTT Technical Research Centre, a big contract-research organisation based in Finland. It reckons the most promising is electronic stability-control, which can improve a car’s handling by detecting and helping to prevent a skid. The centre calculates that if this system alone were fitted to all the vehicles in Europe it would reduce the number of people killed on the roads there by almost 17%. Devices designed to prevent a driver straying from a motorway lane would reduce deaths by about 15%. Those warning drivers about speed limits and other hazards would cut fatalities by 13%. Some of these systems may be combined; the forward-facing camera that monitors road markings for the lane-departure system in the new BMW 7 Series, for instance, is also capable of recognising speed signs and displaying the limit on the dashboard.

As anti-lock brakes migrated from luxury cars to be common in the entire auto fleet, so these may eventually be common technologies.

I hope that as we bail out the U.S. automotive industry, and as we invest in repairing, rebuilding and improving our highway system, appropriate attention will be directed toward incorporating these novel technologies. Indeed, although the topic is not covered in the source article, appropriate ICT technologies incorporated in our transportation system could yield further advantages in fuel economy as well as safety.