Usage of Technology to Reduce Driver Errors

Now-a-days vehicles are safer as ever and get manufactured in a different way from earlier eras and with new techniques that help save lives and prevent serious accidents. There is still room for improvement according to the statistics.

One of the greatest focuses is on road transport as about 97 percent of deaths within the transport sector in the EU occur on the roads according to the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC).

Some of like more than 40000 people die each year from road accidents across the European Union and a further 1 million are severely injured according to Eurostat figures.

Like around 8000 of the fatalities are pedestrians and bicyclists who also account for 300000 of the people were injured.

In order to achieve this goal Brussels wants all the vehicles in Europe equipped with Electronic Stability Control [ESC] a computerized technology that improves the safety of a vehicle's handling by detecting and preventing skids.

This automatically system applies individual brakes to help 'steer' the vehicle where the driver wants to go when it detects loss of steering control.

In the normal driving conditions ESC can reduce accidents by more than 20 percent while its benefits are more significant under wet or icy conditions where the accident reduction rate increases to between 30 and 40 percent.

Emergency call

Another commission of project currently underway 'E-Call' would aid in the delivery of rapid assistance to motorists involved in a collision anywhere in the EU bloc.

A new invention of black box has been installed in vehicles would wirelessly alert and send information such as airbag use crash sensor information and GPS coordinates to local emergency agencies.

Some of the developers hope the system could cut response time by ten minutes on average – a factor that is expected to reduce fatalities by 10 percent. This E-Call is expected be up and running in 2010.

External airbags

A Swedish company that produces some auto-safety parts has developed an external airbag that can be installed on the bonnet of a car in order to protect pedestrians and cyclists when hit.

Before in this year the Dutch Cycling Federation called for such airbags to be mandatory on cars saying the devices could save 60 lives and prevent 1500 serious injuries a year in the Netherlands.

In the past times many of the measures have been taken to protect those sitting inside cars but hardly anything has been done to protect people outside cars the organization said according to Reuters.

Some of the carmakers have already installed in some of their new car models a 'bouncing bonnet' that rises very briefly in the event of a collision with pedestrians or cyclists making the landing on the bonnet somewhat softer.

In the another attempt to cut pedestrian injuries carmakers have agreed to voluntary meet the European front-end design standards by 2010 hoped to cut injuries by 20 percent.

The focusing of the new EU standards has been on safer front-end design to minimize injuries to the legs and head during 40km/h crashes – the speed in which most accidents involving pedestrians happen.