Safety technology in automobiles has come a long way and with the hype about driverless cars it will only get more interesting. One such technology that’s already available in many consumer cars underwent a year-long test in heavier trucks to see if it may make a difference in terms of safety or avoiding accidents. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) looked at the functionality and results of crash avoidance systems (CAS) that were installed in heavy vehicles for a year and fleet managers determined that the system was so effective that trucks equipped with the CAS technology may need to become a standard piece of equipment. Over a year long period, the trucks in the study had NO rear-end crashes where they crashed into a car traveling in front of them.

The systems in the study were either the Bendix Wingman Advanced CAS system, or Meritor WABCO’s OnGuard system. There were 170 drivers from seven different fleets who in total drove three million miles and 110,000 hours. There were 150 total trucks equipped with the systems, taking 6,000 samples from the thousands of instances when they activated things like emergency braking or crash avoidance maneuvers, or issued impact alerts. At the end of the twelve month study period there were no rear-end crashes to cars in front of the trucks. The systems did not interfere with the driver’s other behaviors and fleet safety managers said they would recommend systems like this to be installed as standard equipment in trucks.

The Meritor WABCO company plans on making updates to the systems that were used in this study, which were developed in 2013. Now they have a system called OnGuardACTIVE which can apply the brakes on its own if it detects stopped traffic ahead and it needs to apply the brakes but the driver has not. It can also detect if there is limited visibility and can warn drivers about a possible crash from a vehicle behind them. That tool was not part of this study, but a spokesman for the Meritor WABCO company said that they are hoping to take lessons from this study to improve their new tool’s collision prevention capabilities even further.

Safety systems technologies have already been in cars for a while, starting with antilock brakes, electronic stability control, now blind spot warnings and back up cameras, etc. The technology in this study is yet another development to protect drivers and others around them.

This is not a driverless car system; a driver cannot just take their hands off the wheel and take a nap. But it could go a long way in alerting a driver of the hazards on the road which may not always be crystal clear, or the driver may be in poor conditions. That’s not to say that every collision on the road is the fault of a truck, many crashes involving a truck and car crashes are caused by the car driver and not the truck, but this is still a safety feature that could potentially save lives and prevent accidents. In 2013 there were just under 4,000 killed and 95,000 people injured in accidents involving heavy trucks, and more often than not a truck’s front end is the point of impact in a fatal accident.