In The News
Half of serious truck accidents could be prevented
STUTTGART — According to the findings of development engineers at Mercedes-Benz — following a fleet test conducted with a total of 1,000 Mercedes-Benz Actros rigs in 2005/2006 — one-half of serious truck accidents could be prevented.
For the purposes of the trial, half of the trucks were equipped with the Lane Assistant, proximity control and stability control assistance systems. The number of accidents for the vehicles fitted with the safety package was shown to be halved compared to the 500 with a conventional specification; furthermore, where an accident did occur, the cost of the damage was 90 percent lower.
The results were derived based on an observation period of twelve months and a total distance traveled of 66 million miles.
The state-of-the-art assistance systems from Mercedes-Benz constitute a highly effective means of combating the principal causes of accidents, namely “rear-end collisions†and “veering off the road,†the company said. It was for this reason that these driver assistance systems were developed and successively introduced from the year 2000 onwards, starting with the Lane Assistant.
The accident prevention highlight to date is the Active Brake Assist system, which has been available for Mercedes-Benz trucks for nearly two years now. If, in the event of an imminent collision, the driver fails to react despite multiple warnings, this system will automatically initiate a full application of the brakes. While Active Brake Assist is not always able to avoid accidents, its application of full braking power is always able to reduce the impact speed and therefore considerably mitigate the consequences of the collision. The system has so far logged more than 200 million miles in customer vehicles, with a consistently positive track record.
The rapid spread of these technologies is essential if a wide-scale improvement in road traffic safety is to be achieved, the company noted. In view of this, financial support is now being offered to facilitate their swift introduction. Mercedes-Benz, for instance, has put together attractively priced packages, which reduce the total cost by around a third compared to ordering the systems individually.
The assistance systems offered for Mercedes-Benz vehicles do not relieve drivers of their responsibility for driving safely, the company added. They can certainly aid them, however, by allowing them to concentrate better on the traffic around them, and can always come to their assistance whenever technology can react faster and more effectively than humans.