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Volvo truck and cyclistVolvo demonstrates trucks with collision-detecting brains
Motor vehicle manufacturers have announced various systems to help drivers of their cars avoid collisions, especially with vulnerable road users such as cyclists and pedestrians. Volvo's truck division has announced a system for larger vehicles which, the company says, pose a whole different set of problems.
The system works “works much like the human mind,” Volvo says, using data from a range of sensors, radars and cameras round the vehicle and feeding information to the driver to help avoid a collision."
Here's a video featuring a man with a very deep voice explaining the system.
Despite making their small numbers, trucks and other large vehicles are involved in a disproportionally large number of collisions in which pedestrians and especially cyclists are killed or seriously injured.
In London, for example, trucks account for four per cent of traffic, but between 2008 and 2012 were involved in 53 per cent of the deaths of cyclists. In 2013, 14 cyclists lost their lives in the capital, and HGVs were involved in nine of those fatalities.
“Unprotected road users such as pedestrians and cyclists are especially vulnerable in urban areas where a lot of large vehicles move around,” said Carl Johan Almqvist, Volvo Trucks' traffic and product safety director.
"This technology enables a vehicle to ‘see’ its complete surroundings and feed information to the driver on how to avoid accidents. And if the driver does not respond to the suggested actions, the steering or braking system can be activated autonomously.”
"Our vision for traffic safety is to have no accidents involving Volvo trucks," said Almqvist.
Volvo's collision avoidance research, snappily-named Non-Hit Car and Truck Project, has been running since September 2010 and will wind up this December.
However, it will take five to ten years for systems such as this to hit the market. "We have the main components in place, but we need to do a lot more testing in order to make sure that the system is fault-free. If we manage to solve these challenges, a future without truck accidents is within reach," said Almqvist.
That's partly because the weight and loading of trucks makes automatic control more complicated that with cars.
"Trucks are a different type of vehicle and do not act the same way as cars in traffic. Each truck is loaded differently, for example, and their large size prevents them from carrying out severe avoidance manoeuvres - such as swerving quickly to avoid a collision. So it is important to research and develop technology specifically for trucks," says Mansour Keshavarz, systems engineer at Volvo Trucks.
Nevertheless, the day such systems are installed in all trucks can't come soon enough.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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12 comments
Yorkiechan: Get off that high horse.
There are crap road users in all groups and while you may not be crap, some other lorry drivers most certainly are.
Yeah bud....and for every one bad lorry driver there must be at least half a dozen shitty car drivers....they should ban all vehicles from city centres it would make my job 100% easier.
Is there an online petition to get this type of technology made mandatory on all vehicles. I'm sure it'd cost less that £10 per head per year...
Lorry drivers with collision-detecting brains would be a start.
I get fed up with these type of comments from idiots who have probably never driven or sat in a HGV in their life.
I drive articulated lorries every day and consider myself as a professional driver.
I am also a cycle club member that takes part in club activities.. club runs,sportives,charity rides etc.
Everyday I see countless morons in cars playing on their mobile phones and not paying attention to the bloody road in front..Only yesterday I had to blast my horn at a dickhead in a van on the M4 coming out of London as he was lighting a cigarette and speaking on the phone whilst negotiating tea time traffic.
We are not all mindless morons, unlike some of the videos I have seen of bike riders on this site swerving through city centre traffic as if they were on a deathwish.
Oh by the way I also hold a motorcycle licence and am a member of the IAM.
So before you come out from under your rock with your snotty comments try and engage your brain first.
It makes me laugh when people use the phrase 'professional driver' as if that's a sign of proficiency.
People who get paid to drive for a living are (in my experience) much more likely to be a danger to me. Van drivers, taxi drivers (and to a lesser extent) bus drivers, all of these road users seem more likely to be impatient, inconsiderate, aggressive or downright dangerous. I see plenty of lorry drivers not paying proper attention, but that's usually when I'm driving on the motorway.
As a professional driver, cyclist, motorcyclist and a member of the IAM I'd expect you to know the correct use of the horn on your vehicle.
Great technology and the sooner it's widely available the better.
Five to ten years time? But I want safe sharing of roads with HGV's NOOOOOOWWWWW.
why not just sell trucks which have low cabs and therefore better all round visibility?
Because it doesn't matter how low you are as a driver you can't see jack down the side of your vehicle when the cab and trailer are not aligned. When an articulated lorry is turning, stay clear.
Because of how they are designed. There are campaigns for better lorry design. If you add this system to better design you do everything possible to avoid killing other road users.