Can Traffic Deaths Be Eliminated? NHTSA Thinks So

Toyota Motor Corp.’s James Kuffner is among a global band of safety experts proposing a radical goal for the auto industry: zero traffic deaths.

The target may be unattainable, safety advocates concede. But they say it is possible to virtually eliminate the 30,000-plus annual highway fatalities in the U.S.

Mr. Kuffner, chief technology officer at the Toyota Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., said that if the industry moves decisively, within a decade “the probability of being killed in a traffic accident would be smaller than being killed by lightning.”

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But automakers must speed the usual decades long pace of adoption of new technology, safety experts say, and get advanced data-crunching, crash-avoidance and communications capability into vehicles as quickly as possible.

“The longer it isn’t deployed,” Mr. Kuffner said, “the more people die.”

The war on traffic deaths would require profound changes to vehicles, the way they operate and the way they’re regulated.

And it would upend many industry norms. Can auto makers sell safety instead of performance? Will their customers love robotic cars that don’t crash — but travel cautiously, carefully obeying traffic laws?

On the cusp

Since 2000, auto makers have introduced an array of safety technology: forward-collision warning, rear cameras, lane-departure warning, traffic-jam assist, adaptive cruise control and the like.

Put it all together, said Mark Rosekind, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and “We’re right on the technological cusp. We have this totally new, really exciting chance to make a difference.”

The challenge is to get the technology into vehicles quickly but safely, he said. But the goal is sufficiently compelling to ensure that change will happen.

“Everyone’s got their own view of what the future is going to be,” Mr. Rosekind said. “We’re watching the future get created right in front of us.”

Much of the impetus comes from Vision Zero, a policy written into Swedish law in 1997. Its core tenet is that there is no acceptable level of traffic fatalities; the goal is zero deaths.

The policy fits the safety consciousness of Sweden’s only major auto maker, Volvo, which has pledged that no one will die in an accident in a new Volvo car by 2020.

While other auto makers are cautious about getting to zero — one executive marveled that Volvo’s lawyers would let the company make such a claim — Volvo R&D chief Peter Mertens isn’t backing off.

“By 2020, I think we have a good chance to be damn close to it,” he said.

With continual refinement of safety systems and adoption of vehicle-to-vehicle communications, Mr. Mertens said, it is possible to eliminate traffic deaths: “Once all vehicles are connected, then I think we can achieve zero fatalities in traffic.”

Read more of the original article at Tire Business.

The post Can Traffic Deaths Be Eliminated? NHTSA Thinks So appeared first on Fleet Management Weekly.

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