At “The Next Generation of Automotive Safety Systems” panel at SAE's 2005 World Congress, Josef Halberl, BMW's Safety Chief, gave a stirring call for the industry and government regulators to re-focus attention away from crashworthiness and towards crash avoidance. Dr. Halberl is the Director of Vehicle Safety, BMW Group. The text of his short speech is provided here. His comments follow.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start my summary with a perhaps strange comparison, that of a starving person and the vehicle safety. When a starving person comes out of the desert, they immediately need food and water to become healthy. The more calories, the better. But if they continue to eat and drink like a starving person, they will blow up fat like a balloon, become very slow, and become very unhealthy. What started out as necessary for good health eventually becomes unhealthy, unless the diet is changed. I think, in safety, we need a global change in diet.
About twenty-five years ago, when the automobile industry came out of the “safety desert,” and, by the way, about when I started to work in Passive Safety within BMW, passive safety with many crash tests was necessary!! Today we see seatbelts with pretensioners everywhere, airbags everywhere, padding everywhere, more structure everywhere, more crash tests to fuel the insatiable appetite of a hungry machine. For a long time the right diet! But is it still the right diet? My answer is No!! Unless we change the diet by convincing government regulators that more crash avoidance technology is needed, not more crash tests, we run the danger of becoming “safety fat” like a hundred airbags. The time for adding more and more crash tests is past. Of course, we will always need specific crash tests, but crash avoidance technology, as proven by the voluntary installation of electronic stability control, will return much better results. But we in the auto industry, that is, every single company that builds vehicles, have limited resources. There are no exceptions, not even in BMW. We will continue to advance road safety with innovations and improvements in both active and passive safety, but today, and more so in the future, even small gains in passive safety cost enormous amounts of time and effort. We can better use these resources for much greater gains in saving lives with active safety. But advanced crash avoidance technology is more difficult to get perfect than crash tests.
With advanced crash avoidance technology, the machine must anticipate the danger very accurately, and react correctly to alert the driver, and then take action if appropriate. Vehicles need to electronically “talk” to each other and to the infrastructure and share information about dangers ahead. Especially in this field I see a tremendous potential of accident avoidance when the driver gets precise information beyond the vehicles and his own field of view. Industry already works together with US DOT in programs like VII. But especially in the US, where product liability lawsuits have gone wild, advanced systems require many years of development. And that is exactly why we need to use our resources wisely. We want to contribute with manpower and research dollars in these promising new areas. But more and more crash tests unfairly steal resources away from advanced crash avoidance and delay their introduction.
At BMW, we offer more and more crash avoidance features with each new model. New Tires (we call them Run Flat Tires) that still provide rather safe vehicle handling even without air pressure, Brakes that automatically apply when it rains to keep the discs dry for better braking, Headlamps that turn where the driver turns, Suspensions that automatically adjust during emergency maneuvers, Steering that reacts automatically in slippery conditions and counter-steers when the stability control kicks in, Brake lamps that get bigger and brighter during panic stops, And the list goes on and on.
Ladies and gentlemen, times have changed. We know safety sells. Perhaps 5 IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety) Best Picks out of 5 BMW and MINI vehicles tested have also contributed to our sales success. But Government regulators and lawmakers urgently need to let the auto industry consume its resources with crash avoidance. Shift the focus away from features which require the driver to crash, before seeing benefits. Shift the focus to crash avoidance. Let us prove how good we are. We must not become fat and unhealthy. Crash avoidance is the correct safety diet of the future.
Thank you for your kind attention."
Friday, March 30, 2007
Monday, March 5, 2007
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RB
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Sunday, March 4, 2007
We Lose More Civilians Than Iraq Does
A recent news analysis estimated 34,000 Iraqi's were killed in 2006 stemming from the war. Many were unwitting victims, in the wrong place at the wrong time -- like in the market just getting groceries at the moment of a massive bomb blast.
For years, Americans have suffered more severe losses -- over 40,000 are killed on the roads. In Europe, the number is about the same. Again, many of those who die are unwitting victims in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Most crashes require several elements to come together in a single instant -- wandering out of your lane for an instant doesnt usually matter, unless there is a parked car on the side of the road, for example. To some extent, we are not completely innocent; we can't be completely vigilant 100% of the time. In fact, driving is a very forgiving environment if you examine all the goofy things we do behind the wheel.
Some portion of those crashes are because of rank stupidity -- no seat belt, drunkenness, excessive speeding -- but mostly, those who die are regular people like me and you.
That's why active safety technology is so important -- radar and machine vision systems are ever-vigilant. They nevere get tired, never get distracted, never get impatient.
The best driving capability resides in our brains -- at least when we are well rested, relaxed, and undistracted. But for all the other times (!), a helping hand from technology is a welcome thing indeed.
Iraq is in the midst of a great tragedy, and the scale of the suffering there is very great. But let's also remember that a tragedy on a similar scale happening right here at home.
For years, Americans have suffered more severe losses -- over 40,000 are killed on the roads. In Europe, the number is about the same. Again, many of those who die are unwitting victims in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Most crashes require several elements to come together in a single instant -- wandering out of your lane for an instant doesnt usually matter, unless there is a parked car on the side of the road, for example. To some extent, we are not completely innocent; we can't be completely vigilant 100% of the time. In fact, driving is a very forgiving environment if you examine all the goofy things we do behind the wheel.
Some portion of those crashes are because of rank stupidity -- no seat belt, drunkenness, excessive speeding -- but mostly, those who die are regular people like me and you.
That's why active safety technology is so important -- radar and machine vision systems are ever-vigilant. They nevere get tired, never get distracted, never get impatient.
The best driving capability resides in our brains -- at least when we are well rested, relaxed, and undistracted. But for all the other times (!), a helping hand from technology is a welcome thing indeed.
Iraq is in the midst of a great tragedy, and the scale of the suffering there is very great. But let's also remember that a tragedy on a similar scale happening right here at home.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Redefining Safety: Crash Avoidance!
Lets take a look at your car. What’s that baby got? I don’t mean horsepower and turbochargers, I mean safety!
Front air bags? Almost certainly.
Side airbags? Maybe.
Head curtains?
Side reinforcement?
Crash absorbers?
Five star crash safety rating?
Maybe you’ve got all of these goodies -- fantastic!
But let me ask you -- what would you rather do? Be well protected in a crash or never crash at all?
Today, over 100 people die every day on the roads, and crashes are rampant. But now, thankfully, we’re entering a new era – can you imagine a day when car crashes are almost unheard of? A time when you can take a trip without that thought lurking in the back of your mind that says “Its dangerous out there. Crashes happen all the time – somebody is not going to make it home today – will it be me?”
We are moving from crash protection to crash avoidance. Its about time, right? I mean, we have computers coming out our ears in every other aspect of our lives, so why not some smarts in our cars?
They’re actually very smart already, and when you add technology such as radars, laser scanning, machine vision, your vehicle starts to become “situation aware.” It can tell you if you’re about to inadvertently do something dangerous, like run a stop sign. It can tell you if you’re about to hit the guy in front of you while you fumble with changing CD’s. In fact, it can hit the brakes and stop you from hitting that guy. It can tell you if there’s someone in your blind spot when changing lanes. It can even tell you when you’re getting sleepy behind the wheel.
These systems are becoming increasingly available. For one thing, do NOT buy a new car without electronic stability control – it saves lives.
Besides that, there’s adaptive cruise control, night vision, blind spot monitors, lane departure warning, collision mitigation braking, parking assist, and more. That’s what’s out there now. What’s coming are “connected cars” which exchange data between each other and the road constantly to make sure all is well.
Imagine, for instance, knowing that that bridge ahead is icy before you get to it.
On Smartest Cars, we’re here to tell you about these vehicles, which will take us well beyond the airbag mentality. We’ll show you the brilliant engineers putting the newest systems through their paces, who have to figure out how to make radar blips mean something! We’ll talk to people using these systems today – do they work? Do they make sense, or is it all just techno-infatuation for the geeky few?
Imagine – cars that don’t crash.
That's what this blog is all about -- stay tuned!
Front air bags? Almost certainly.
Side airbags? Maybe.
Head curtains?
Side reinforcement?
Crash absorbers?
Five star crash safety rating?
Maybe you’ve got all of these goodies -- fantastic!
But let me ask you -- what would you rather do? Be well protected in a crash or never crash at all?
Today, over 100 people die every day on the roads, and crashes are rampant. But now, thankfully, we’re entering a new era – can you imagine a day when car crashes are almost unheard of? A time when you can take a trip without that thought lurking in the back of your mind that says “Its dangerous out there. Crashes happen all the time – somebody is not going to make it home today – will it be me?”
We are moving from crash protection to crash avoidance. Its about time, right? I mean, we have computers coming out our ears in every other aspect of our lives, so why not some smarts in our cars?
They’re actually very smart already, and when you add technology such as radars, laser scanning, machine vision, your vehicle starts to become “situation aware.” It can tell you if you’re about to inadvertently do something dangerous, like run a stop sign. It can tell you if you’re about to hit the guy in front of you while you fumble with changing CD’s. In fact, it can hit the brakes and stop you from hitting that guy. It can tell you if there’s someone in your blind spot when changing lanes. It can even tell you when you’re getting sleepy behind the wheel.
These systems are becoming increasingly available. For one thing, do NOT buy a new car without electronic stability control – it saves lives.
Besides that, there’s adaptive cruise control, night vision, blind spot monitors, lane departure warning, collision mitigation braking, parking assist, and more. That’s what’s out there now. What’s coming are “connected cars” which exchange data between each other and the road constantly to make sure all is well.
Imagine, for instance, knowing that that bridge ahead is icy before you get to it.
On Smartest Cars, we’re here to tell you about these vehicles, which will take us well beyond the airbag mentality. We’ll show you the brilliant engineers putting the newest systems through their paces, who have to figure out how to make radar blips mean something! We’ll talk to people using these systems today – do they work? Do they make sense, or is it all just techno-infatuation for the geeky few?
Imagine – cars that don’t crash.
That's what this blog is all about -- stay tuned!
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