TRL develops vehicle safety standards for Europe

Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) has developed new vehicle safety standards which it claims will save 25,000 lives and assist European countries in the development of autonomous vehicles (AVs). Matthias Seidl, senior researcher - vehicle safety & regulation at TRL, says the advanced safety measures will protect all road users. “Intelligent speed assistance and drowsiness and distraction recognition will support drivers in their ongoing tasks, autonomous emergency braking and emergency lane keeping wi
February 28, 2019 Read time: 2 mins

Transport Research Laboratory (491 TRL) has developed new vehicle safety standards which it claims will save 25,000 lives and assist European countries in the development of autonomous vehicles (AVs).

Matthias Seidl, senior researcher - vehicle safety & regulation at TRL, says the advanced safety measures will protect all road users.

“Intelligent speed assistance and drowsiness and distraction recognition will support drivers in their ongoing tasks, autonomous emergency braking and emergency lane keeping will intervene in the most critical situations to avoid a crash and improved crash tests will ensure that injuries of occupants as well as pedestrians and cyclists are minimised in the remaining collisions,” Seidl adds.

The standards were approved by members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO).

Richard Cuerden, head of TRL’s Academy, says: “We are pushing very hard for relevant and practicable standards to be introduced for our vehicles, not only in the UK but across Europe.”

In 2014, TRL began working on behalf of the European Commission (EC) to assess the feasibility of the measures and assembled a group of unnamed car manufacturers, non-governmental organisations, governments and safety organisations.

TRL hosted a forum to analyse each safety measure and allow group members to offer feedback for consideration.

Looking ahead, TRL has been chosen by the EC to help develop the technical rules for the new systems

Enforcement

Related Content

  • March 17, 2017
    Europe’s road safety gains have stagnated EU
    Europe will fail to meet its road death targets as enforcement budgets are slashed and drivers face an epidemic of distractions. The European Union will not achieve its aim of halving the number of people killed on its roads each year by 2020, delegates to Tispol’s (the organisation of European traffic police) annual conference in Manchester were told. “The target will be missed because there was only a 17% decrease in road fatalities across Europe between 2010 and 2015 when [the rate of reduction] should h
    Read More
  • December 20, 2016
    ETSC welcomes EU plans for safer cars, vans and lorries
    The European Commission has published a list of 19 lifesaving safety technologies that could be made mandatory on new vehicles in the next update of EU vehicle safety rules expected next year. The European Transport Safety Council (ETCS) welcomes the announcement but says several critical areas for action are missing, and the proposed timescale is far too long considering that most of the technologies are already available. ETSC says 26,000 people die on European Union roads annually, with at least
    Read More
  • December 12, 2017
    European Commission: tighter rules for safer/cleaner cars
    The European Commission (EC), European Parliament and the Council have reached a political agreement on the commission proposal from January 2016 to raise the quality level and independence of type-approval and testing before a car is placed on the market. It would enable the EC to be able to initiate EU-wide recalls and impose penalties on manufacturers or technical services of up to €30,000 (£26,000) per non-compliant car.
    Read More
  • April 24, 2018
    EU passes testing rules to avoid ‘Dieselgate’ repeat
    The European Parliament has rubber-stamped new rules following the Volkswagen emissions scandal which seek in part to increase the quality of testing. The idea of the reforms for the type approval process is to ensure that vehicles act on the road in the way that they have been tested in laboratory conditions. The agreement, which has been two years in the making, requires national market surveillance authorities to check 1 in 40,000 vehicles registered in the country the previous year, with at least 20% o
    Read More

Highlighted Content