Auto safety initiative seeks to reduce driver errors

A push by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to use technology to reduce traffic fatalities aims to keep drunk drivers off the roads by using in-vehicle technology that immobilises their cars. They are pushing for systems that prevent drivers from starting their cars, help cars avoid collisions and prevent vehicles from starting if the occupants don’t wear seat belts. "Ninety per cent of all crashes have an element of human error," NHTSA administrator David Strickland said. "We really
December 2, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
A push by the US 834 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to use technology to reduce traffic fatalities aims to keep drunk drivers off the roads by using in-vehicle technology that immobilises their cars. They are pushing for systems that prevent drivers from starting their cars, help cars avoid collisions and prevent vehicles from starting if the occupants don’t wear seat belts.

"Ninety per cent of all crashes have an element of human error," NHTSA administrator David Strickland said. "We really need to focus on what more we can do to address these risks."

The insurance industry and auto safety experts predict the government's initiative will improve driving safety, leading to fewer claims and deaths.

"This is the holy grail," said Russ Rader, spokesman for the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety.

Much of the technology already exists. Cars equipped with optional collision warning and automatic braking systems have already been demonstrated. Vehicles sound a warning when a passenger isn’t wearing a seat belt; car makers can already link that to the car's transmission to prevent the car from moving.

Now NHTSA and a coalition of seventeen car makers are working on the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety or DADDS, which uses sensors in the cabin to measure blood-alcohol content by breath or touch to ensure a driver is below the legal 0.08 per cent threshold for impairment.

Drunk driving killed more than 10,000 people last year, about a third of traffic deaths. About 3,000 people are killed annually in crashes they would have survived if they had buckled up, according to NHTSA.
Location Based Systems

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Japan to overhaul Cambodia’s traffic signals
    August 26, 2014
    Japan’s development organisation, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which has worked hard to alleviate Cambodia’s traffic woes, is to overhaul the capital’s traffic light system in a further bid to reduce the gridlock. Cambodia’s economy has boomed over the last decade, the broad French-built boulevards and backstreets of Phnom Penh have become bottlenecks, while at peak times, the town centre becomes gridlocked. Over the next few years, the JICA plans to redesign and rebuild the city
    Read More
  • Need for harmonisation in ITS standards
    February 1, 2012
    As the calendar rolls over, and we hop from continent to continent and World Congress to World Congress, where Memoranda of Understanding and cooperation agreements are the headline news, it is easy for those not intimately involved to forget that standards definition is a well-nigh continual process. Significant progress has been made in recent months towards achieving the critical mass and economies of scale which are going to drive development and deployment in, amongst other things, cooperative infrastr
    Read More
  • Legalities of in-vehicle systems and cooperative infrastructures
    February 1, 2012
    Paul Laurenza of Dykema Gossett PLLC discusses the paths which lawmakers may go down on the route to making in-vehicle systems and cooperative infrastructures a reality. The question of whether or not to mandate in-vehicle systems for safety and other applications is a vexed one. There is a presumption on some parts that going down the road of forcing systems' fitment is somehow too domineering or restricting. Others would argue that it is the only realistic way of ensuring that systems achieve widespread d
    Read More
  • Airborne traffic monitoring - the future?
    March 1, 2013
    A new frontier in the quest to monitor road traffic is opening up… but using airborne drones to reduce the jams comes with some thorny issues. Chris Tindall reports. Imagine if you could rely on a system that provided all the data you needed to regulate traffic flow, route vehicles and respond swiftly to emergencies for a fraction of the cost of piloting a helicopter. That system exists, but as engineers and traffic managers start to explore the potential of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – more commonly k
    Read More

Highlighted Content