Proponents of next-generation active safety technologies designed to prevent accidents or mitigate their severity scored a significant endorsement at the recent SAE World Congress.
In a keynote speech, National Highway Traffic Safety Admin. chief Nicole Nason urges the auto industry to move forward aggressively in perfecting the systems and making them available in production vehicles.
“Active safety technology is going to play an increasingly significant role in the agency's injury prevention and reduction strategy,” Nason says.
She says consumers need to become comfortable with active safety technologies that employ vision sensors to identify objects in a vehicle's path. That information can be processed by electronically actuated braking systems, such as electronic stability control, to help avoid a crash.
Active cruise control, rollover mitigation and lane-departure warning are included in the list of active safety technologies.
“Convincing the public of the safety benefits likely means that people will have to give up control of their vehicle even for a second or two, which means that people will have to learn to trust the safety systems,” Nason says.
