Memorandum from Oliver Carsten, University
of Leeds (RS 48)
1. INTRODUCTION
My area of research is particularly focussed
on new technologies and safety, including how new technologies
can be applied to further reduce casualties. There is quite a
long lead time associated with deploying new in-vehicle and roadside
systems. Therefore this memorandum discusses how full advantage
can be taken of the potential of new systems to deliver benefits
post-2010.
2. NEW SYSTEMS
Potentially we are now entering an era when
new systems will account for a very large part of casualty reduction.
We have already seen this happening in the area of occupant protection
(passive safety), where the improved performance of vehicles in
protecting their occupants has delivered a substantial proportion
of casualty savings among occupants. No vehicle manufacturer wishes
to score less than five stars for a new model in the Euro-NCAP
crash tests, and it is likely that further improvements in the
performance of vehicles in protecting their occupants will continue
to deliver savings in injuries.
Even more promising are the various active safety
systems now ready for deployment or under development. At a European
level various activities are grouped under the eSafety initiative.
These include the very useful work of the eSafety Road Map Working
Group looking at paths to implementation (eSafety 2005). The report
from this group points out the major role of incentives in speeding
up deployment and hence ensuring that the benefits can be realised.
Two types of system can be distinguished. On
the one hand there are autonomous systems, often know as ADAS
(Advanced Driver Assistance Systems). On the other hand there
are cooperative systems, often known as CVHS (Cooperative Vehicle
Highway Systems) or CVIS (Cooperative Vehicle Infrastructure Systems).
Such systems require vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication or
infrastructure-to-vehicle communication (I2V). An example of a
V2V system would be one in which the car in front notifies the
following vehicle that it is beginning emergency braking, so that
the car behind can respond immediately. An example of an I2V system
is one in which a vehicle or driver is automatically informed
by a transmitter in the infrastructure that the road surface is
icy.
It is not inherently obvious which kind of system
will produce greater benefits. For example, both autonomous and
cooperative systems are looking at the benefits of assisting or
warning drivers in intersections (both urban and rural). Such
locations continue to account for a high proportion of collisions
including very serious and fatal collisions at rural intersections.
It is possible as the INTERSAFE subproject of the large European
project PreVENT has shown to address the problems using advanced
wide-angle scanning radars to create an entirely autonomous system.
Such systems would be costly and would initially be available
on expensive luxury cars. On the other hand it is possible to
apply an infrastructure-based approach in which the road is equipped
with detectors to identify impending conflicts and the relevant
vehicles are then warned about the potential for an accident.
This is the approach being adopted by I2V projects such as SAFESPOT.
An investment may be required from the relevant highway authority
but vehicles could be equipped with the relevant warning devices
for quite low cost. Such devices could easily be offered as a
retro-fit. Only the most dangerous junctions could be equipped
initially, but penetration into the vehicle fleet could be rapid,
since no special link to the vehicle would be required for the
on-board device.
There are thus substantial and significant choices
to be made in terms of deployment. Reliance on vehicle manufacturers
may slow down the roll-out of systems and may lead to lower benefits
in the short to medium term. On the other hand I2V equipment may
require public investment to speed up the process of realising
safety benefits from these new systems.
3. DEMONSTRATING
BENEFITS
The need to demonstrate the benefits of new
in-vehicle technologies has, to some extent been appreciated in
the UK. It is after all the motivation behind the recent real-world
trials of Intelligent Speed Adaptation, funded by DfT. The same
need for robust testing of the systems in a real-world context
has now been grasped at a European level with the recent emphasis
on the need to demonstrate the concrete benefits of Advanced Driver
Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Cooperative Vehicle Highways Systems
(CVHS) through so-called Field Operational Tests (FOTs). Such
tests are intended to prove the real-world impacts of using various
systems by conducting rigorous large-scale trials using participants
who drive the vehicles in their everyday driving. Equipping the
vehicles can either be done by adding the relevant system to the
participant's or the fleet's vehicles, but is more typically done
by loaning equipped vehicles to the participants. Such FOTs have
been quite common in recent years in North America, with examples
being a trial of Adaptive Cruise Control (Fancher et al 1998)
and a trial of Forward Collision Warning (University of Michigan
Transportation Research Institute and General Motors Research
and Development Center, 2005). However, with the notable exception
of trials of Intelligent Speed Adaptation, they have been much
less common in Europe. The resulting lack of solid empirical evidence
on the impacts of new technologies has been identified as a critical
weakness by a report from the eSafety Forum setting out the research
priorities for the European Seventh Framework Programme (FP7)
(eSafety Forum, 2006):
[T]here is still a great need to investigate
the behaviour of the user in the real traffic environment when
being equipped with new ICT systems for safety and efficiency
as compared to the user's behaviour without the ICT systems. The
short and long term effect of the use of such systems is also
of great importance to assess as a justification of the systems.
Field Operational Tests (FOTs) have during later
years developed as a powerful tool to gain insight into how new
functions and systems suit the user when operated in the real
context under sufficiently long time to reach the "daily
operational and behaviour level".
Two large consortia have been funded by the
European Commission to conduct such FOTs on near-market or already
on-market systems such as Forward Collision Warning and Curve
Speed Warning. However, it can be noted that the overall UK participation
in these projects is quite small and that little of the testing
will take place on UK roads and with British drivers.
At the same time that the European Commission
is funding these FOTs to establish the real benefits of the new
technologies, it continues to promote the introduction of some
systems whose benefits are questionable. One such system is eCall,
which is the system that automatically notifies the emergency
services in the event of a serious crash. The European Commission
is planning fitment in new cars from 2009 as part of full-scale
rollout. Counterpart equipment in emergency centres ins required
and the Commission is putting pressure on the member states to
provide that infrastructure. Viviane Reding the European Commissioner
for the Information Society and Media has stated of eCall: "It
has huge potential. Every year it can save 2,500 lives in Europe,
with very large socio-economic benefits. We cannot wait any longer:
we have to work together and sort out the barriers remaining to
the implementation of eCall." (European Commission, 2005)
It is suggested that up to €26 billion annually could be
saved with eCall, were all cars equipped. The claimed savings
in fatalities would amount to a reduction of over 6%.
It is therefore important to examine the actual
evidence for the benefit of eCall. One source was the European
project E-MERGE, which focussed on technical validation of the
system at various test sites, but they also produced safety predictions.
The prediction of E-MERGE was based on a questionnaire survey
sent out to the PSAPs (Public Service Answering Points, ie emergency
call centres) in the project test sites[91]
(Geels, 2004). The report states: "The replies show a positive
view for the additional value of an E-MERGE system. The foreseen
live savings are estimated on an average between 5-10% which means
2,000 to 4,000 lives given the current number of fatalities of
approximately 40,000 and the reduction of the severity of injuries
is estimated at the same number 5-10%. None of the PSAP's foresees
large procedural or technical problems with implementing the E-MERGE
solution". (page 47)
The E-MERGE final report adjusts these conclusions
somewhat (Nielsen, Lindholm. and Andrade, 2004). Drawing on the
same questionnaire, it states:
Based on the project's investigations, a full-scale
deployment of the E-MERGE system is expected to lead to a decrease
in fatalities and severe injuries in traffic accidents as follows:
— Fatality: 5% reduction.
— Severe Injuries: 10% reduction to light
injuries.
— Light Injuries: No positive effect foreseen.
That level of reduction would mean 2000 lives
saved each year and a saving of nearly €4 billion each year
in related social and health costs and lost "public"
income calculated for the European Community. (page 49)
This is most probably the source for the European
Commission predictions. It is not clear where the €26 billion
in claimed savings came from. The SEiSS project on the socio-economic
impact of intelligent safety systems, drawing on the E-MERGE results,
estimated the annual accident savings at €12.4 to €21.9
billion (Abele et al, 2005). Overall, it is remarkably
thin evidence for making an important decision on the Europe-wide
implementation of a safety system.
Only one detailed study from a European country
on the impact of eCall has been found (Virtanen et al,
2006a and Virtanen et al, 2006b). This study was carried
out in Finland and used in-depth accident reports on fatal accidents.
In Finland, all road accidents that result in a fatality within
three days are investigated by an in-depth team. For the study
cases covering 1180 fatalities, of whom 919 were motor-vehicle
occupants were used. The time delay between accident occurrence
and the notification of the emergency response centre was calculated.
Two trauma specialists were on the study team and their task was
to assess whether a fatality would have been prevented had there
been no delay in accident notification. The conclusion was that
eCall would have saved 3.6% of the fatalities, but it was also
found that eCall would have been most effective in accidents involving
vehicles for which eCall is not designed, ie motorcycles and mopeds.
The likely effect of eCall could not be authenticated for any
fatality to a pedestrian or cyclist.
There were also cases where the system might
possibly have prevented the fatality. This proportion was approximately
5% for motor-vehicle occupants and 1% for pedestrians and cyclists.
Thus the overall conclusion was that eCall could have prevented
approximately 4-8% of the road fatalities that occurred in Finland
during 2001-03. It was also calculated that benefits would most
likely exceed the costs.
In thinking about the transferability of these
results to Great Britain, it should be noted that in Finland 70%
of fatal accidents occur outside urban areas and single-vehicle
accidents account for 47% of all fatal accidents. In Great Britain,
58% of fatal accidents occur on rural roads, and single-vehicle
accidents constitute 26% of fatal accidents (RCGB, 2006). In addition
the country is much more densely populated than Finland and British
roads carry heavier traffic. There is thus less scope for eCall,
although there are no doubt parts of the road network such as
the Scottish Highlands where eCall would no doubt affect rescue
times and hence severity outcomes.
4. PROMOTING
DEPLOYMENT
It was stated above that reliance on the vehicle
manufacturers to introduce and promote the new systems may not
lead to the most beneficial deployment path in safety terms. The
government needs to give careful consideration as to how to best
encourage and ensure rapid take-up of the most beneficial systems.
Waiting for market forces to deliver may mean that the benefits
are restricted for some time to drivers and passengers in expensive
luxury cars. It could even mean that the full potential is never
realised as the vehicle manufacturers may be reluctant to offer
systems such as Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) to their customers,
especially in their more effective forms such as the version of
ISA that is directly linked to engine and brake control. There
are a number of mechanisms for promoting system introduction that
should be considered:
1. Consumer information. Euro-NCAP has been extraordinarily
successful in promoting safer design for occupant protection.
It needs to be extended to include primary safety, ie crash avoidance,
including giving points for equipment with beneficial ADAS technology.
2. Tax incentives to vehicle purchasers.
3. Use of the purchase of vehicles for the government
fleet to promote new systems that are of proven benefit.
4. Dialogue with the insurance industry.
5. Strong encouragement to manufacturers to improve
what they offer—Swedish pressure has resulted in virtually
all cars on the market in Sweden being fitted with Electronic
Stability Control.
5. REFERENCES
Abele, J, Kerlen, C, Krueger, S, Baum, H, Geissler,
T, Grawenhoff, S, Schneider, J and Schulz, W H (2005). Exploratory
study on the potential socio-economic impact of the introduction
of intelligent safety systems in road vehicles. SEISs Final Report.
VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik, Teltow, Germany.
European Commission (2005). eCall—saving lives
through in-vehicle communication technology. Factsheet 49. European
Commission Information Society and Media.
eSafety Forum (2005). Final report and recommendations
of the implementation road map working group. European Commission,
Information Society and Media, Brussels.
eSafety Forum (2006). Strategic research agenda:
ICT for mobility. eSafety Forum, Working Group RTD. European Commission,
Information Society and Media, Brussels.
Fancher, P, Ervin, R, Sayer, J, Hagan, M, Bogard,
S, Bareket, Z, Mefford, M and Haugen, J (1998). Intelligent cruise
control field operational test. Final report. Volume I: Technical
Report. University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute,
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.
Geels, A (2004). E-MERGE compiled evaluation results.
Deliverable D6.3 of E-MERGE. Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, The
Netherlands.
Nielsen, M, Lindholm, R and Andrade, M (2004). E-MERGE
Final Report. Deliverable D1.2 of E-MERGE. ERTICO, Brussels, Belgium.
University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute
and General Motors Research and Development Center (2005). Automotive
collision avoidance system field operational test report: methodology
and results. DOT HS 809 900. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
Washington, D.C.
Virtanen, N, Schirokoff, A, Luoma, J and Kulmala,
R (2006a). Impacts of an automatic emergency call system on accident
consequences. Ministry of Transport and Communications, Helsinki,
Finland.
Virtanen, N, Schirokoff, A, Luoma, J, Karkola, K
and Saalo, J (2006b). In-depth evaluation of the effects of an
automatic emergency call system on road fatalities. Unpublished
paper.
February 2008
91 There were six test sites, one in each of six countries. Back
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