Car brands are delivering a raft of new technology to care for those outside the car as well those within
- Active bonnets and A-pillar airbags
- Auto emergency braking
- Exit warning
- Night vision/laser lighting
- V2X
Vulnerable road users account for over a third of road fatalities in Australia. And while the number of drivers and passengers dying in motor vehicles has trended downwards over the past decade, the number of pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists fatally injured has declined at a significantly slower rate.
And fatalities are just one aspect of Australia’s road trauma stats. Serious injuries are an often-forgotten consequence of interactions between vehicles and more vulnerable road users.
It’s an area that bodies like Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission (TAC) are devoting more attention too. And so are car makers across the globe – driven by changes in regulation, safety rating protocols and other factors.
“Lives lost gain a lot of attention, obviously because of their impact on individuals and families, but serious injuries are also very important and very impactful,” comments Dr David Young, TAC’s Manager Vehicle Safety, Innovation and Technology.
“With more and more sensors around the vehicle there’s an opportunity for better safety around pedestrians. There are some vehicles that have a wide array of cameras around them that give you the full 360-degree aerial view when you pop the car into reverse. That’s definitely a way to increase the visibility [for] the driver,” Dr Young explained.
“Then there’s other technology which is a little bit further off, which is things like what’s often termed as vehicle-to-anything or ‘V2X’ connectivity.”
Design and technology intended to protect those outside the vehicle is a relatively new area of expertise for carmakers. It’s an evolution about which Dr Young and other safety experts are upbeat.
So, what are some examples of the safety technology currently available to buy today, or likely to be introduced soon, which improve the protection of vulnerable road users?
Active bonnets and A-pillar airbags
Pedestrian safety has been a small but significant factor in automotive design for decades now, starting with recessed door handles in the 1970s. But it’s the crash structure of the car’s front end that has received more attention from designers and engineers than anything else in recent years.
It started with less aggressive structures and designs and more recently has evolved to include pedestrian protection.
Active bonnets have been around for a while now, and their adoption was given a kick along by European Union legislation in 2013. If a front-end sensor detects a collision, an active bonnet will see the rear of the bonnet raised to better absorb the impact of a pedestrian.
But while active bonnets have likely reduced pedestrian deaths significantly, there’s still more that can be done, says David Young. The car of the future will have to balance the inherent conflict between aerodynamic drag reduction and pedestrian safety.
“In the future we may even see things like airbags or protective systems in the windscreen pillars of the vehicle,” Young says.
“The A pillars – the front pillar of the vehicle that goes up either side of the windscreen – is an area that’s very much recognised by people who work in the road safety area as something that’s a high risk for pedestrians and cyclists and [other] vulnerable road users.
“It will be exciting to see how manufacturers can respond to that risk in new and innovative ways to ensure that those areas are more forgiving, if impacted by a pedestrian,” Dr Young commented.
Auto emergency braking
Autonomous or auto emergency braking (AEB) and the technology which powers it forms the basis for automated driving. Perhaps more importantly, however, it delivers the ability for a car to sense other road users in its path and react without driver input if dangerous situations arise.
Using radar or optical cameras scanning the road ahead, AEB detects an obstacle in front at a closing speed and automatically brakes the car to avoid or at least mitigate the seriousness of the collision. When that object is a pedestrian or other vulnerable road user, such as a cyclist, the benefit is obvious.
From its original conception as a safety feature to reduce panel damage and front-rear collisions at low speeds, AEB has advanced rapidly over the past decade and a half.
“Since the first systems came in, there’s then been development of things like ‘vulnerable road user AEB’ – so the AEB that avoids a crash with a pedestrian or a cyclist,” says Dr Young.
In recent years, AEB technology has been co-opted for ‘reverse AEB’ and rear cross-traffic assist, both of which will bring the car to a complete stop if a pedestrian walks behind the vehicle while it’s reversing.
Exit warning
A common concern associated with inner-city motoring is sharing the road with cyclists. Responsible drivers are very aware of the threat their vehicles pose for cyclists on the move, but even once the car is parked, a cyclist remains vulnerable to injury – sometimes severe injury – if the driver or a passenger ‘doors’ a passing cyclist while leaving the vehicle.
Proving just how multi-faceted and interconnected modern automotive safety systems are, exit warning systems (also known as ‘safe exit assist’ systems) are able to detect and distinguish a cyclist approaching the parked car from behind.
At the very least, the exit warning system will alert the driver to the approach of a vulnerable road user in the driver’s blind spot but, increasingly, exit warning is an actively interventionist device that keeps the rear doors latched. Thus the system is not just working to keep cyclists safe, it also prevents passengers (perhaps young children) from throwing the rear door open and bolting across the road in front of an oncoming car.
Night vision/laser lighting
According to the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE), pedestrian fatalities in Australia peak between the hours of 6-9pm on weekdays, but as late as 12-3am on weekends.
Being able to see pedestrians, animals, and even debris or degraded road conditions at a distance is a significant advantage to drivers.
American prestige manufacturer Cadillac developed night vision for its Deville model as early as 2000. The thermographic (infra-red/heat-detecting) camera-based systems that are now common in cars from a host of brands can be passive receptors of infra-red light or can actively illuminate the objects ahead.
Another boon for long-range detection of pedestrians and other road users is laser headlights.
Pioneered by BMW in its i8, this type of headlight can project a bright beam up to 600m ahead of the car — roughly double the range of the latest LED headlights – and do so without dazzling oncoming drivers thanks to innovative beam ‘shaping’.
V2X
What started out as ‘Car 2 Car’ communications has morphed into V2X – ‘Vehicle to anything’ – in recent years.
V2X originally posited a world in which cars would ‘talk’ to each other and take evasive action if they were on a collision course. But then someone thought: why should the cars talk to other vehicles alone? Why not infrastructure as well? What about cars communicating with traffic lights to coordinate traffic flow or pedestrian crossings to keep vulnerable road users safe?
These V2X (or ‘V2I’ – ‘Vehicle to Infrastructure’) systems use wireless technology. The systems rely on protocols harmonised around the world, through a global coalition.
“What we’re finding, particularly with connectivity, is that this is one of the areas where global action and coordination is the most important, and it is tending to happen at a global level,” says Dr Young.
“There’s a lot of consortiums that exist internationally that aren’t just between governments or nations: they’re also involving manufacturers; they’re also involving the testing centres – all of these kinds of things. So, it really is a global coalition to try and work out this problem and see how we can address this technology.”
Trials are already underway here, with Lexus, VicRoads, the TAC and Telstra collaborating on one such trial back in 2018.
Although a long-term proposition, V2X is the way of the future in protecting vulnerable road users.
Keyword: Five new car features that protect others