In a report published recently, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has made a number of recommendations to help address road safety, such as requiring vehicle manufacturers to install forward collision avoidance systems as standard equipment on all new vehicles. The NTSB also recommended the installation of autonomous emergency braking systems following the publication of performance standards for such equipment by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
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Data that support the recommendation for broader adoption of forward collision warning and autonomous emergency braking systems include:
- In 2013, there were 327,000 large truck crashes with 3,541 involving fatalities in the United States, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association (FMCA).
- In recently released data, FMCA estimates these fatal collisions resulted in approximately $42 billion in total costs during 2013.
- Reports from Meritor WABCO’s Fleet Advisory Council indicate that installation of OnGuard can reduce the number of rear-end collisions by as much as 87 percent.
- A NHTSA study by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute released in 2013 found that 20 percent of rear-end collisions involve stationary objects and 17 percent are in low-visibility conditions where robust and rapid system reaction is the most critical.
Meritor WABCO announced its support of the recommendation. Meritor WABCO currently supplies OnGuard collision mitigation system for commercial vehicles in North America. With more than 80,000 units installed, 27 billion road miles of service and a reorder rate of virtually 100 percent, fleets are increasingly welcoming this system’s contribution to improved road safety and operating efficiency.
The NTSB report reiterated the organization’s earlier recommendation to NHTSA to develop stability control system performance standards for all commercial motor vehicles and buses with a gross vehicle weight rating greater than 10,000 lbs., regardless of whether the vehicles are equipped with a hydraulic or a pneumatic brake system.
