Europe works on road safety with long term goal of uncrashable cars

The largest road safety research project ever launched in Europe will usher in a series of powerful road-safety systems for European cars. But, in the long term, its basic, experimental research could lead to a car that is virtually uncrashable. The technology would be pushed to make crashes increasingly unlikely and mitigate crashes when they do occur. Tiny differences have a huge impact on car safety. Dropping speed by 1km/h can reduce accidents with injury by 3 per cent, while braking fractions of a second sooner is enough to reduce the damage caused dramatically.

A truck exits suddenly from a side road, directly into your lane only dozens of metres ahead. Suddenly, your car issues a warning, starts applying the brakes and attempts to take evasive action. Realising impact is unavoidable; in-car safety systems pre-tension the safety belts and arm the airbag, timing its release to the second before impact.

PReVENT has a budget of over €50 million and 56 partners pursuing a broad, but highly complementary programme of research. A dozen sub-projects focus on specific road-safety issues, but all projects support and feed into each other in some way.

PReVENT project WILLWARN uses wireless communication with other vehicles to alert the driver about potentially dangerous situations ahead, while MAPS&ADAS reads sat-nav maps to track approaching hazards, like bends, dips or intersections. SASPENCE looks at safe driving distances and speed, while LATERALSAFE finally brings active sensing to the blind spot.

Two projects, APALACI and COMPOSE, take this a step further, actively tracking the speed and trajectories of surrounding vehicles and other road users in real time. If one vehicle suddenly stops, or a pedestrian suddenly steps onto the road, they swing into action to rapidly calculate the implications.

2 thoughts on “Europe works on road safety with long term goal of uncrashable cars”

  1. Here is an article which talks about currency strength

    http://engram-backtalk.blogspot.com/2007/04/why-is-euro-strong-vs-dollar.html

    The primary factors usually listed for a strong currency are inflation under control, higher interest rates (more potential for return), more demand for the currency (other countries need your currency for imports -so they hold more in reserves), less supply relative to demand (monetary policy, how much money are you printing), expectations (what investors expect you to do in the future to effect your economic health and money.)

  2. “The US can no longer be sloppy and expect to stay on top”

    I have seen nothing but irresponsible fiscal policies all my life. In fact it just seems to get worse and worse for the USA. I would be very surprised if the USA could get out of their downward spiral in the near future.

    One of the biggest threats I have seen is the budget deficit, although I am no economy expect… What kind of things can the US do to strengthen its currency?

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