“IN OUR GUT, DO WE BELIEVE IT WORKS? YES. IN
OUR GUT, DO WE BELIEVE IT’S A GOOD INVESTMENT? ABSOLUTELY, OR WE WOULDN’T CONTINUE DOING IT. OUR MOTTO’S ALWAYS BEEN, ‘DO THE RIGHT THING BECAUSE IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO.’”
—DEAN NEWELL, VICE PRESIDENT OF SAFETY, MAVERICK TRANSPORTATION
ers can recoup their investments many times over if they prevent a crash. According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) “Commercial Motor Vehicle Facts – March 2013,” there were 273,000 crashes involving large trucks in 2011, with an estimated cost of $87 billion. FMCSA figures supplied by Bendix, revealed a fatality crash involving a large truck costs a carrier $7.7 million, an injury crash costs $392,000 and a property damage crash costs $26,000. The costs of a crash aren’t just
measured in repair bills and attorneys’ fees. A serious accident can distract a carrier’s attention and consume its energy for years while resulting in ter- rible publicity. Then there’s the human toil – the family that has potentially lost a loved one, and the driver who loses his job or at least his confidence. “We’ve had some situations,” Hare
said, “and drivers, they really beat themselves up over it, and it takes a while to get them back on the road, if ever, when it’s a non-preventable. There are just a lot of those hidden costs that people do not recognize when they see that, ‘Oh, Motor Carrier A has had a crash. They just pay for their vehicle and move on.’ That is not the way it goes.” Sales of crash avoidance technolo-
gies are increasing. According to Alan Korn, Meritor WABCO’s director of advanced brake system integration, 50,000 OnGuard systems have been sold in North America since it was released in 2007, with a 65 percent
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growth rate between 2008 and 2013 and a 20 percent growth rate between 2012 and 2013. T.J. Thomas, Bendix’s director of marketing and customer solutions for controls, said his company doesn’t release sales figures on all prod- ucts but said sales have been growing since the first generation Wingman was released in 2009. Both claim reorder rates of nearly 100 percent, and both say interest is increasing in Class 6-7 vehicles. The systems use radars to moni-
tor road traffic. In OnGuard’s case, a long-range radar monitors what’s happening ahead while a short-range radar also looks to the tractor’s sides. In Wingman’s case, a single radar watches activity to the front and sides of the forward vehicle. Drivers are alerted through beeps and lights when a threat is detected, and OnGuard taps the brakes if the driver doesn’t respond in time.
According to Korn, the system
reacts based on what is happening on the road, with the first goal being to re- engage the driver. “The way OnGuard works, it’s going to give the driver every opportunity to take an action before applying the brakes,” he said. “It’s cal- culating if the vehicle can do a safe evasive maneuver. And when the system senses it cannot, that’s when the brak- ing process begins.” In both cases, the technology will
stop the truck by itself, though it typi- cally will require more distance than if the driver had applied the brakes
because it does not apply as much pres- sure. Both manufacturers use the term “collision mitigation” instead of “colli- sion avoidance.” According to Thomas, the goal is to turn what would have been a fatality crash into an injury crash, an injury crash into a property damage crash and a property damage crash into a near miss. “The equipment is there in case the driver has a bad day,” he said. Until 2014, neither system has been
able to apply brakes when encountering stationary objects in the lane. That’s about to change. OnGuard will include a braking feature in 2014 because its radar, which was updated in 2012, is ready to distinguish between station- ary vehicles and other objects such as overhead signs, Korn said. Bendix is promising to release a next generation soon but is not ready to describe its fea- ture set. Neither system is activated unless
the tractor is traveling 15 miles per hour. Both systems currently include an active cruise with braking feature that will maintain a gap between the tractor and the forward vehicle. The technology has advanced sig-
nificantly since the introduction of ear- lier, passive systems that included only an alert. Maverick’s Newell said those systems produced so many false alarms that drivers tended to ignore them. “It’s kind of like living next to
a railroad track or airport. You tune things out,” he said. “Well, that’s the problem with a passive system. It does a good job when you first put it on, but as your fleet gets older, the drivers become immune to false alarms. It’s the ‘boy who cried wolf’ syndrome.” Newell said the system now emits
fewer false alarms. When it does, it’s likely out of adjustment, and the sys- tems have automatic adjusters. When one of the systems malfunctions, the truck is still drivable, but Maverick’s drivers are instructed to immediately park the vehicle so it can be towed for repairs. There has been no quantum leap in technology that has made these changes
ARKANSAS TRUCKING REPORT | Issue 6 2013
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