On the path to autonomous commercial vehicles, the technologies improving highway safety today are the building blocks for even safer commercial vehicles, and advanced driver assistance systems in the coming years and decades. At SAE International’s 2017 Government/Industry Meeting in Washington, D.C. Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems offered perspective on commercial vehicle automation. This continues its efforts to share leading-edge technical knowledge and insight with the full range of participants in the commercial and vehicle transportation industries.
“Within the past few years, we’ve seen commercial vehicle safety systems refine and incorporate full stability, collision warning and mitigation, and lane departure warning,” said Fred Andersky, Bendix director of government and industry affairs, who was among the presenters for the commercial vehicle safety section. “And the industry is on course to evolve and integrate these systems into even more advanced driver assistance systems over the next few years, with expected driver-supported platooning and lane-keeping capabilities. Beyond those horizons lie automated applications like highway autopilot systems, leading to true autonomous technologies in the future.”
SAE International, a 127,000-member global organization, develops standards for engineering professionals, with an emphasis on transport industries, including commercial vehicles.
While the foundational technologies are in place, future generations of safety systems will require progress on several fronts.
“In order to allow tomorrow’s advanced driver assistance systems to mitigate larger amounts of crash energy, we’ll need to see further enhancements of camera and radar technologies, ‘smarter’ algorithms capable of increased object and situation recognition, vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications, along with stronger deceleration and steering intervention,” Andersky said. “In short, more information into the system to enable earlier and stronger acceleration and steering interventions to help mitigate more types of crash scenarios.”
In addition, there are other challenges facing the industry, including an ever-changing regulatory landscape, system costs, technical reliability, and social acceptance.
Bendix emphasized that driver assistance technologies are designed to complement safe drivers, safe driving practices, and proactive driver training programs – not replace them.
The company also recognizes and stresses the importance of ongoing industry outreach and conversation, as well as fleet and owner-operator support, in maximizing highway safety.
