4 September 2014 – 1:52pm
We’ve made progress in reducing the number of highway fatalities each year in this country from about 41,000 to 32,000 in 2013. That’s positive obviously, but stop to think about it. We still have 32,000 Americans dying every year, a shocking number. Aside from more seat-belt use and tighter enforcement of speed limits, can’t anything be done?
I am at Toyota’s Advanced Safety Seminar in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and that is the overriding question. In this and subsequent dispatches, I will bring my readers up to speed on the latest in this debate.
Toyota does not think that the idea of a completely driverless car is anywhere on the horizon, as Google seems to suggest. It thinks that the relationship between the driver, the vehicle and the surrounding environment is going to go through a profound change. “There is going to be more changes (in the relationship between dfriver and vehicle) in the next five years than there has been in the past 50 years,” predicts John Lee, with the University of Wisconin, who is a Toyota research partner.
But that the driver and the vehicle are going to have to remain partners. Drivers won’t be able to simply check out and watch a movie. They are going to have to maintain enough attention that their vehicles, when confronted by a situation they can’t manage, will be able to pass back control of the vehicle to the driver. The car will monitor the driver’s eye movements and hand positions to determine whether the driver is capable of resuming control.
Stop to think of all the changes we’ve already incorporated into our cars: Electronic stability controls have eliminated fishtailing. ABS antilock brakes transfer power to the wheels that grip, from the wheels that slip, eliminating skidding. Cruise control helps maintain a constant speed onlong trips. Late model cars now possess backup video cameras on their dashboards, blind spot detectors, parking assistance, and adaptive cruise control, which helps maintain a safe distance with the vehicle ahead of you on the highway.
In the overall scheme of how advanced technology is going to proceed, we are now at the second of five stages. Stage One was just an old-fashioned car with no computerized help. The second stage is where we use these automated helping devices. Stage Three is the next level where these features are packaged together into a more coherent whole. Toyota thinks we are moving to this third stage by the end of the decade. Stages Four and Five (where the vehicle can drive itself) are further off into the future.
Toyota’s vision is to keep “layering on” new technologies in a way that drivers can accommodate and appreciate, without causing major confusion in the driver’s mind. If a vehicle is traveling at 60 mph and the driver is confused, there is a fatality waiting to happen.
So the company is going to add Active Safety Systems including pre-collision avoidance in the United States by the end of 2015. Significantly, it is committed to introducing that technology across its entire vehicle lineup, not just in pricey Lexus vehicles. In the words of former National Highway Safety and Traffic Administrator (NHTSA) David Strickland (who is also here), safety must be “democratized.” It shouldn’t be for merely the affluent. It is younger, less affluent motorists who may be in bigger need of help than the wealthy.
The new technology will apply the vehicle’s brakes if it detects that a crash is imminent with another vehicle, with a large animal, or with a pedestrian if it determines that the driver is not responding. I’ve test driven this in Japan, and it works. The company also is studying “collission mitigation,” which means, how can it prevent injuries in the case of an accident. This revolves around the posture of the driver and how seatbelts are worn, at least in part.
The ultimate vision is a system where cars communicate with each other and with the infrastructure around them in a way that accidents can be avoided entirely and deaths can be further reduced, if not eliminated. It’s a worthy goal. I’ll address other issues in my next few blogs.
