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Volpe Center Highlights - January/February 2001

Safety

Director's Notes | Focus | Safety | Mobility | Human and Natural Environment |
Economic Growth and Trade | National Security | Papers and Presentations

Promote public health and safety by working toward the elimination of transportation-related deaths, injuries, and property damage.

Supporting the Intelligent Vehicle Initiative (NHTSA)

The Volpe Center's Accident Prevention Division provides technical support to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) under the Intelligent Vehicle Initiative Program (IVI). The primary goal of the IVI is to accelerate the development, introduction, and commercialization of driver-assistance products and services in order to improve the safety of the nation's ground transportation system by reducing the number and severity of motor vehicle collisions.

As part of this effort, the Volpe Center recently completed a major evaluation of the Intelligent Cruise Control (ICC) system. The ICC extends conventional cruise control by incorporating forward-looking sensors that automatically adjust to maintain a minimum distance from preceding vehicles. The Center's evaluation was based on a 15-month field operational test (FOT) of the ICC involving 108 drivers in Michigan, and included discerning the ICC system's safety effects as well as performance, user acceptance, and deployment impacts. A major part of the project was devoted to acquiring, enhancing, and archiving the voluminous FOT source data into a robust database to support timely, quality-assured analysis by the evaluation team. The database also was designed to serve a variety of research needs beyond those of the ICC evaluation. For example, it offers useful baselines of driving behavior on freeways and arterials, and driver reaction response times to visual stimuli (recorded on video).

In anticipation of reuse of the ICC data by the research community, Mr. Andy Lam and Mr. Neil Meltzer of the Accident Prevention Division delivered final copies of all data files and documentation from the ICC evaluation study. This extensive database will be publicly available for further analysis through the NHTSA data archives at the National Crash Analysis Center at George Washington University. This transaction completes the multiyear ICC evaluation project and provides an important basis for support of future IVI safety evaluations.

Volpe Hosts Meeting of Railway Safety Review Committee of India

On October 31, 2000, the Office of Safety and Security hosted a meeting at the Volpe Center with the Railway Safety Review Committee (RSRC) of India. The RSRC, which was formed two years ago after a series of serious railroad accidents in India, requested the meeting because of the Center's varied experience in railroad safety research.

Among the Indian delegation were Justice H.R. Khanna, former Chief Justice of the Indian Supreme Court and Chair of the RSRC; Shri Ananta Sethi, a member of the Indian Parliament; Shri Mathew John, Secretary of the RSRC; and several high officials of the Indian Railway Board (which runs Indian state and regional railways). Volpe attendees included Dr. Richard R. John, Director of the Volpe Center; Mr. Bob Ricci, Director of the Office of Safety and Security; Mr. Bob Dorer, Chief of the High-Speed Ground Transportation Division; Mr. Michael Coltman, Chief of the Structures and Dynamics Division; Ms. Anya Carroll of the High-Speed Ground Transportation Division; Dr. Donald Sussman, Chief of the Operator Performance and Safety Analysis Division; Dr. Ted Sussmann of the Structures and Dynamics Division; Mr. David Skinner of the Operator Performance and Safety Analysis Division; and other members of the Volpe technical staff.

Topics of discussion included activities of the RSRC, emergency preparedness, vehicle track dynamics, track inspection and vehicle qualifications, switching operations fatalities, and locomotive engineer stress and fatigue. The possibility of the Committee's enlisting the Center's help with its complex safety challenges was also discussed; this support could include a visit to India by Volpe experts for further information exchange.

During its two-week visit to North America, the committee also visited the Federal Railroad Administration, the Association of American Railroads, the National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, and major U.S. and Canadian railroads.

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