The Drive for Smarter, Safer Cars

April 13, 2004 -- Pop into any new car dealership today and it's easy to see how far the automobile has progressed since the first horseless carriages appeared over 100 years ago.

Sleeker chassis built with strong yet lightweight materials; smaller and efficient engines that reliably deliver high performance; and "creature comforts" such as air conditioning and heated seats are just some of the obvious differences from the "Tin Lizzies" of yester-century.

But as much as the outward appearance and features may have changed in automobiles, the latest evolutionary steps are more about brains that beauty. Consider what some automakers have in store for the near future.

Some car companies are working to develop systems that literally watch the driver's eyes. If it detects a lack of eyelid blinks, the system may deduce it has a sleepy driver behind the wheel and shake the steering wheel to get the driver's attention.

Within a few years, car makers such as Audi and Volvo will offer in-vehicle systems that can automatically determine if the car is veering out of a road lane and alert the driver — or possibly make its own slight course corrections.

Also within that time frame, more cars could become equipped with radar- or camera-based systems that will detect and warn drivers of nearby objects. And if a driver doesn't take the proper avoidance steps, the car may take "pre-collision" action — applying the brakes, tightening occupants' seatbelts, rolling up windows and locking the doors.

Steering for Fewer Fatalities

Already, cars are stuffed with some of the basic electronic smarts — from computer chips that autonomously monitor and adjust mechanical performance to sensors that control when and how an airbag deploys during a collision.

But the push to these smarter, more "active" systems, some say, is needed to help make cars even safer — especially as drivers become seemingly more distracted while behind the wheel.

"Passive safety system — seatbelts and airbags — have done a fantastic job over the last 40 years," says Richard Lind, director of advanced engineering of the electronics division of Delco, a leading vehicle systems maker in Kokomo, Ind. "But in the last 10 years or so, the [safety] benefits have stabilized."

Indeed, according to the AAA Foundation of Traffic Safety, the Washington-based research arm of the non-profit AAA, there are still some 1.2 million annual traffic fatalities worldwide.

And in the U.S., where stricter regulations and mandatory safety equipment have helped curb car-related deaths over the last 10 years or so, the figures are still quite high. About 42,000 people are killed on American roads annually.

Charting a New Course for Safety

And while increased car safety standards, better roads, and improved emergency medical response and treatment have led to fewer deaths, more can be done says Peter Kissinger, a former investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board and now president of the AAA Foundation.

"I have been in the [safety] field for 30 years and we've made remarkable progress [in reducing the rate of traffic accident fatalities]," says Kissinger. But he says the biggest challenge — reducing car fatalities to an absolute zero — is possible, if faced with the right attitude.

"We seem to take for granted that if you have all these cars on the road and all this traffic, you are going to have a certain number of deaths," says Kissinger. "Until you break through that mindset, it alters the way you face the problem."

And in the auto industry, one of the most prevalent mindsets to the car safety problem is to use even more technology.

"Our objective is to develop what we call a cocoon of radiation or a sensor system that is always looking all around your vehicle, a full 360-degree coverage," says Delco's Lind. "It will give drivers 'situational awareness' — knowledge of things around the car. And the car will know the situation — even if driver doesn't."

Lind says much of the work and technology is an offshoot of systems developed to help pilots cope with cockpit "workload."

"There are just so many things that drivers need to do and the potential for distraction — dropping something on the floor, talking to your child, looking down to change a radio station," says Lind. "We look at active systems as a support system for the driver."

Getting Inside the Driver’s Mind

But AAA's Kissinger remains skeptical that technology alone will provide for safer travel. The larger problem, Kissinger believes, is that many drivers fall into complacency.

"Most people get into the car, they start driving down the road and they multi-task — they adjust the radio, grab a hot cup of coffee and start drinking it — and nine times out of 10, nothing [bad] happens," says Kissinger. "We drive safely down the road and it reinforces the habits that are clearly unsafe."

And adding more technological "fixes" to these growing driver distractions might prove to have a compounding effect. "If the new technology makes it easier to take our minds off the road or the task of driving, we might not be better off," he says. As an example, he points to the controversial use of cell phones while driving.

Although drivers have taken to using hands-free headsets — in some cases, due to local ordinances that prohibit holding the phone while driving — cell calls while driving can still be a distractive danger, which many continue to ignore.

"The biggest distraction of cell calls is the [diminished] mental capacity," says Kissinger. "If [hands-free] encourages drivers to have longer conversations, then we might be worse off."

Kissinger proposes a more effective solution would be better driver education — especially among teens and other inexperienced drivers.

"The state of driver education is pretty abysmal," says Kissinger. "Parents will spend $1,000 on computer summer camp, but balk at sending kids to $250 driver's ed courses."

By increasing driver's ed to emphasize safety rather than just the mechanics of driving, Kissinger believes that teens will learn that getting a vehicle license is more than just a rite of passage.

"We live in a wonderful country where we have many freedoms and freedom of mobility is tremendous," says Kissingger. "But it's also a great freedom that comes with a great responsibility."

Assistance, Not Autopilot

And that's an argument that automotive system designers such as Lind won't disagree with.

"Drivers are ultimately responsible and will always be responsible [for their actions]," says Lind. And he says these new systems will "put [the driver] in the loop and help manage the task," rather than completely automate the driving experience.

That's a safe bet since researchers are finding it an extremely difficult and expensive task to develop vehicles smart enough to operate without any human intervention.

Last month, dozens of universities, robotics researchers and garage tinkerers attempted to create and race such autonomous vehicles across the California desert in a Pentagon-sponsored challenge. None of the teams were able to collect on the $1 million prize money since none of the robots were able to complete more than a handful of miles in the 150-mile race."

Frank Viquez, director of automotive research for ABI Research in Oyster Bay, N.Y., says that completely smart and autonomous passenger vehicles will still be many years away.

"In order to have a car that drives by itself, you have to have a vehicle with no mechanical links —everything has to be controlled by a computer," says Viquez. "And there's a lot of work that needs to be done before that happens — not the least of which is a change in laws which require a mechanical link for safety."

Trickle-Down Theory

Still, he admits that some of the smarter technology is making its way into production cars. But because of the cost to develop such systems, they're typically limited to the luxury models of the top automakers.

Premium lines such as Cadillac and Mercedes Benz offer models that have so-called adaptive cruise control which automatically control brake and throttle to maintain safe distances from the car ahead of it. Meanwhile, Lexus and Infinity are expected to offer some versions of "lane-departure" systems in future cars soon, says Viquez.

"If you look at the typical vehicles where these systems are installed, these are all high-end cars where the drivers demand such systems from their vehicles and demand to have the safest car out there," says Viquez. "Making them mass market is the challenge."

But as with most technology, it's more than likely active systems will eventually trickle down to cheaper car models. After all, Viquez and other car industry watchers say it wasn't that long ago that ABS, airbags, and Electronic Vehicle Stability Control were limited to high-end autos only.