Watch out! Your car can now avoid a crash

Roland Jones Business news editor • Profile • E-mail

Picture the scene: A car on a highway senses it’s closing quickly on a vehicle ahead. It calculates there’s a chance of an accident and warns the driver, quickly preparing the vehicle and its passengers for an impending crash, tightening seat belts, closing the sunroof and applying the brakes. A dangerous accident is averted and car and passengers escape the collision relatively unscathed.

It may sound like a scene from a science fiction movie, but this futuristic auto safety system is a soon-to-be science fact.

The top-of-the-line 2007 Mercedes-Benz S-Class, which goes on sale early in 2006, includes a radar-guided pre-crash technology that senses when a car might crash and takes evasive action. Another car company offering a sophisticated pre-crash system is luxury car maker Lexus — the Acura RL, for example, includes the Collision Mitigation Braking System in the 2006 model year, which helps prepare the car and its passengers for impact when sensors detect a possible crash.

After working for decades to reduce deaths and injuries from automobile accidents using safety belts and air bags, car makers and their suppliers are increasingly shifting their focus to crash prevention. Other technologies now appearing in cars include lane departure warning systems, stability and anti-skid controls and anti-rollover systems.

“Car safety technology is moving from being a reactive technology to being more proactive,” said Lee Callaway, head of business development and marketing for MotoDrive, Motorola’s car technology group. “These days vehicles have air bags and anti-skid mechanisms, and although these things help you when you’re in a bad situation, we want to keep the bad situation from happening in the first place.”

Motorola recently teamed with Michigan’s Department of Transportation to build and test a roadside network that can reduce traffic accidents and road congestion through vehicle-to-vehicle wireless communication systems that alert drivers to potential collisions, upcoming road works, bad weather or congestion. The partnership is part of the U.S. government's Vehicle Infrastructure Integration initiative, which is looking into the feasibility of deploying a communications system to improve the safety and efficiency of the nation's road system.

Over the last five years, the number of fatalities on U.S. roads from automobile accidents has held relatively steady at about 40,000 each year Callaway said, citing National Highway Traffic Safety Administration figures. And these deaths continue to have a staggering impact on the U.S. economy, costing some $230 billion a year, or about $820 per person according to the NHTSA.

“If you factor in congestion caused by accidents, it’s an extra $78 billion on top, so something has to change,” Callaway said. “When it comes to seatbelts and airbags we have reached a point of diminishing returns — that’s why the government is working on this epidemic.”

Companies want to manage their risk too. Bryan Calloway, head of business development at LeasePlan USA — which leases fleets of cars to companies like McDonald’s and Altria — says his customers are keen to reduce the risk of injury to their drivers.

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