The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Field Study of Heavy-Vehicle Crash Avoidance Systems has found that trucks equipped with collision avoidance systems for a 12-month period experienced no rear-end crashes with vehicles traveling ahead. Overall systems worked as intended with no negative impact to safe driving behavior, according to the study. Additionally, fleet safety managers reported that they would recommend collision avoidance technology as standard equipment.
“We were honored to participate in this study and lend our voice to endorse these safety technologies,” said Joseph Thornton, vice president of maintenance for PS Logistics. “We have been very pleased with the overall performance of the system and return on investment that [Meritor WABCO’s] OnGuard has afforded us.”
“Fleet safety is our mission and our business,” said Matthew Stevenson, president and general manager of Meritor WABCO. “While fleets report up to an 87% reduction in rear-end crashes and about 89% reduction in rear-end crash costs with the previous OnGuard system, our newer OnGuardACTIVE will be a further improvement. We’ll take lessons learned from this study to strive for the prevention of 100 percent of rear-end collisions moving forward.”
The lessons learned from the study as well as more than nine years of experience and 120,000 systems in operation with 267 fleets will help Meritor WABCO continuously improve the features and performance of its safety systems, Stevenson said.
