Alfa Romeo Safety Technology
The traditional active and passive safety features already fitted to Alfa Romeo cars will be joined by a new type of safety feature in coming years: Active Intervention Safety Systems.
In conventional car design, active safety features are those that help the driver avoid road accidents, such as the ABS antilock brakes, responsive front wheel drive chassis and fast and the accurate steering fitted to all Alfa Romeos. Passive safety features that those that protect the car's occupants once an accident has become inevitable, as represented in the Alfa Romeo range by twin front air bags, pretensioing seat belts, and impact-absorbing body work around the safety cage.
But Alfa Romeo engineers and designers are working on the next generation of safety features: Active Intervention Systems. These are a host of features that will be fitted to Alfa Romeo models over the next decade that actively intervene when they sense either a potential accident (so that it may be avoided) or they activate the car's passive safety systems before the impact actually takes place, making the safety features considerably more effective.
Because the high technology, considerable computing power and the use of still expensive features such as laser radar, these new features will be phased over a ten year period, but the first features are expected to appear on Alfa Romeo models with 12 to 18 months.
Blind spot and lane warning sensor: The first of the new technology features likely to appear is the blind spot sensor. In its first incarnation, this system will be purely a warning device. Using low cost CCD video cameras mounted in the door mirrors and in front of the rear view mirror, as well as a computer program that examines the pictures and looks for hazards, this system will provide two warnings. The first will be a visual and audible warning if the driver starts to change lanes while there is an approaching car in his or her blind spot.
The second warning system watches the lane markings on the road. Should the driver wander or drift out of his or her line without using the indicator, initially as the car crosses the lines it will artificially generate a vibration through the steering wheel as if the lines were rumble strips. If this warning is ignored, a louder audible warning activates because in this eventuality it is likely the driver has fallen asleep at the wheel. In the second-generation application, this system will actively intervene and steer the car away from the danger in the blind spot and keep the car from drifting off the road.
Adaptive cruise control with stop and go: Conventional cruise control is more than a convenience feature, it also reduces fatigue and helps drivers avoid breaking speed limits. However, as roads become more crowded, its usefulness has been whittled away as it has to be constantly switched on and off with other traffic making steady speed driving impossible.
While adaptive cruise control can and will help with this situation - by automatically adjusting the set speed to match the car in front and by keeping a safe distance - it cannot cope with sudden large differences in speed. It can also lull a driver into a false sense of security. This is because it can only use engine braking and aerodynamic drag to slow down the car, which in a high gear and at a high speed, may not be very effective.
This is where Adaptive Cruise Control with Stop and Go comes in. This system not only uses a considerably more effective control system with sensors looking forwards, backwards and sideways, it obviously has a more powerful computer and software program so that it can operate the brakes safely and efficiently. For example, if a car with adaptive cruise control with stop and go is being driven along a freeway at 110 km/h up an incline, and a truck doing 70 km/h pulls out in front of it, the car will apply the brakes to a level of deceleration that always ensures a safe distance remains between the car and the truck. When the truck pulls back into the left hand lane, the car will sense the road is once again clear and accelerate back to 110 km/h.
The system will detect objects moving in the road as small as pushbikes and brake to avoid them and, because it is looking sideways as well as ahead, it can also decide whether there is sufficient room to move around an obstacle and only accelerate when the road is clear.
Accident warning and avoidance systems: With the next generation Alfa Romeo fitted with the laser radar, CCD cameras and computer analysis and control systems it will then be easy to upgrade to the next level of technology. These are systems that identify the likelihood of an accident and first warn the driver, for example of a manoeuvre that will conflict with the position of another car, and then if the driver continues to drive into an accident, the car will intervene to avoid the accident, either by apply the brakes or using the steering itself to steer around and avoid the hazard.
Safety system activation - the "virtual safety belt": Passive safety systems in cars may be split into two groups, those that are always present and in position, such as bumpers and crumple zones, and those that require activation to save lives, such as the pretensioing seat belts and air bags a ready fitted to Alfa Romeo models.
This later group work, quite literally, in the blink of an eye. However, their effectiveness could be further increased given more time to launch themselves and be in place for an accident. This may only be a 100th of a second, but it could be the difference between life and death. This is particularly important in side impacts were, with no bonnet or boot, just a thin door between the occupants and the impact, time is even more of an essence to safety.
Again, new positioning and warning technology is coming to the assistance of the next generation Alfa Romeo owner. With the car surrounded by a virtual safety belt of long and short range sensors detecting speed and mass, following the track of other vehicles as well as the car to which the technology is fitted, the computer will know when an impact is inevitable and give the life saving safety system extra time to be in place for the impact.
This could mean that first the seat belts would reel in slack in the belts and pull the occupants into the safest position for the accident. The airbags, which would be next generation smart front, side, roof and knee airbags, would then not only deploy in the optimum sequence for the type of accident - frontal, side, offset and so on - they would also deploy to the correct level of inflation for the occupant in the seat, from small child to large adult, and for their position in the seat. And if they weren't required for a particular type of accident, then they wouldn't deploy.
Finally, the cars system would then contact the emergency services informing them of the position of the car, using GPS information, the number of people in the car and the nature of the accident so that the right type of services may be dispatched.
The psychology of the driver behind the wheel: Although cars have and will continue the change radically in safety terms, one area is little changed and with that one area causing up to 95 per cent of all accidents and something needs to be done about it. The cause of 95 per cent of all accidents? The driver.
For this reason the Alfa Romeo Research and Development centre not only employs a team of engineers and designers, it also has on its a team of psychologists and behavioural scientists. Their role is twofold. Firstly to examine why people behave the way they do behind the wheel, and how cars may be designed to enhance good behaviour and driving skills and not, through design, actually make drivers behave more dangerously on the road.
The psychologists have also been given a second role with the arrival of the Active Intervention Safety features. They now study driver reaction to the new technology and help the engineers and designers to produce systems that drivers find acceptable, easy to adapt to and that are easy to live with in every day life. There studies have found a natural resistance from many drivers to systems that take away car control in critical situations and they are working to ensure that these systems are introduced in a manner in which they will be able to be most effective.
Quickies
- Mazda Motor Corporation has announced that the company will join with Ford to produce a new global inline engine family for the 2001 model year and beyond passenger cars and light trucks. Mazda's engine plant in Hiroshima has been selected as one of the production sites along with Ford's engine plants in Dearborn, Michigan, U.S.A.; Chihuahua, Mexico; and Valencia, Spain.
- Honda Australia Roadcraft Training (HART) at St Ives, Sydney, opened today following a A$1.4 million redevelopment and the installation of Australia's first motorcycle rider training simulator. The A$250,000 Honda Riding Simulator takes motorcycle training into a new era of "virtual reality" - clients can even view playback of their sessions, gaining crucial insight into their abilities.
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