Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/759228
62 commercial carrier journal | december 2016 EQUIPMENT: COLLISION AVOIDANCE SYSTEMS ance systems could have prevented or lessened the severity of injuries in two- car accidents involving tractor-trailers by nearly 80 percent in 2011-12. According to FMCSA's report, heavy trucks involved in injury crashes rose sharply in 2014 – from 73,000 to 88,000. Injuries as a result of large truck crashes per 100 million VMT also rose from 34.6 to 39.8, their highest point since 2006. e report says 45,000 com- bination trucks were involved in injury crashes in 2014, compared to 38,000 the prior year. On a 100-million-VMT basis, the rate rose from 22.6 to 26.4. Last year, NTSB released a re- port recommending collision avoidance systems become standard on all new commercial and passenger vehicles. "Regulators are still working on decid- ing a date," Morrison says. A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is possible in 2017 but is more likely in 2018, Andersky says. "is could, of course, change with the change in the administration," he says. Morrison says Wabco has sold more than 100,000 of its OnGuard collision mitigation systems, and more than 200 fleet customers have logged more than 45 billion miles. Heavy-duty truck fleets using Wabco's OnGuard have re- ported an up to 87 percent reduction in accidents, resulting in an up to 89 per- cent savings in accident costs compared to vehicles lacking the system. The driver remains the key In its 2015 report, NTSB concluded that collision warning systems, particu- larly when paired with active braking, could reduce the frequency and sever- ity of rear-end crashes significantly, but Morrison says the systems only can complement safe driving habits. "e industry has a long history of providing driver assist systems that improve driver, vehicle and road safety," he says. "But it's also important to note that computers never have a bad day, get tired or distracted, and that the driver remains in ultimate control of the vehicle." Safety technologies help support, not replace, the talents of the driver, says Del Lisk, vice president of safety services for Lytx, a provider of in-cab safety systems and analytics. "We've seen the unintended hazards of auto- mated technology – when drivers begin to rely on the technology to do the job of driving, and they mentally check out," Lisk says. Collision mitigation systems aug- ment a driver's skills, but they're not a replacement for attentiveness, he says. "Technology has limits, and keeping the driver engaged to compensate for those limits is going to be critical for the success of collision mitigation systems and other forms of automat- ed technology in the cab." The driver is "the most sophisticat- ed technology in the cab," Lisk says. Bendix's Wingman Fusion system provides the driver with various alerts to let him know when a collision is imminent with a stationary vehicle before applying the brakes. Key words in collision mitigation Forward Collision Warning alerts the driver if he is getting too close to the vehicle in front of him. These alert-only systems with no active in - tervention help the driver maintain a safe following distance and manually avoid a potential collision situation. Crash Imminent Braking (CIB), Au- tonomous or Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) are synonymous and both alerts and intervenes, meaning that when the system determines a collision is imminent, it alerts the driver and applies braking to help avoid the collision or lessen its sever - ity if unavoidable. Dynamic Brake Support helps the driver apply additional braking power to mitigate a collision. If the system determines the driver is not applying enough braking, it automatically will add additional braking to help – as long as the driver already has started to apply the brakes. – Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems Andrus Transportation Services, a St. George, Utah-based 340-truck dry van car- rier that serves 11 Western states and Texas, selected Lytx's DriveCam system following a trial period with its drivers.