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Volpe Center Highlights - May/June 2002

Director's Notes

Director's Notes | Focus | Safety | Mobility and Economic Growth
Human and Natural Environment | Organizational Excellence | Homeland Security
Papers and Presentations

Preventing Collisions, Saving Lives

The majority of transportation deaths and injuries involve motor vehicles. Saving lives by preventing collisions is a major objective of the DOT and the Volpe Center. This issue's Focus article highlights the DOT's Intelligent Vehicle Initiative (IVI), which encourages the development of driver assistance products. Such systems may use remote sensors to detect other vehicles or objects, a computer to evaluate the possibility of a collision, and a "driver interface" to relay that information to the driver.

The IVI operates as a public-private partnership in which federal government and private industry collaborate to promote the development, testing, and deployment of effective and practical safety features. The federal partner, DOT, takes the lead in conducting basic research, defining performance standards, and developing objective evaluation methodologies. DOT also evaluates promising IVI systems via field operational tests and assesses their safety benefits. Private industry develops the technology, integrates it into the vehicle, conducts field tests, and puts it into production. The Volpe Center supports the Federal Highway Administration as well as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in helping DOT fulfill its Federal partner role. The Focus article in this issue describes recent work performed for NHTSA.

Preventive technology is an unprecedented approach to vehicle safety. Driver assistance systems do not passively prevent collisions through recalls, or mitigate the effects of collisions through safety features such as air bags - they actively assess the driving environment in ways that the driver cannot and alert the driver, who can act before a collision is inevitable.

Today, relatively few drivers, those owning the more expensive car models, have access to such sophisticated systems. The vehicles of the near future may have intelligent cruise control or night vision as standard features, and in the long-term, vehicles may be voice-activated. Nonetheless, alert and courteous drivers will always be critical to maintaining safety, regardless of the automated aids available. And the most important contribution anyone - whether walking, driving, or pedaling - can make to highway safety is to know and obey the rules of the road.

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