* DC - Why trucks are one step closer to automatic brakes
-- NHTSA entertains another incremental step towards transit’s automated future... The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has now announced that it will consider mandating all large trucks carry the automatic emergency braking systems that could have prevented that accident, and thousands like it across the U.S. each year... Automatic emergency braking (one of various names for the systems) uses radar, lasers, and cameras to see as far as 650 feet in front of a truck—about three times the typical follow distance on highways. They first signal a driver of upcoming obstacles, and then, if the driver doesn’t react, will slow or stop the vehicle. The technology has been available for nearly a decade, and is already in service in tens of thousands of trucks across the U.S. and Europe...
... The bigger picture could give truckers a different set of worries. The past 10 years have seen an explosion of automated systems on trucks, including adaptive cruise control, lane-departure warnings, and electronic stability control (which NHTSA has already mandated for large trucks by 2017). That buildup is leading, bit by bit, to fully autonomous trucks. While that will be a huge boon to overall driving safety, it could also push human truck drivers out of the picture...
(Photos by Wabco - Wabco’s OnGuardACTIVE emergency automatic braking system for trucks detects vehicles ahead and can apply the brakes to prevent or mitigate damage from a potential crash) -- Washington, DC, USA - Fortune, by David Z. Morris - OCT 27, 2015
* DC - Heavy-spending trucking industry pushes Congress to relax safety rules for drivers
-- Big rig crashes kill nearly 4,000 Americans each year and injure more than 85,000. Since 2009, fatalities involving large trucks have increased 17 percent. Injuries have gone up 28 percent... Given these numbers, you might expect Congress to be agitating for tighter controls on big rigs. In fact, many members are pushing for the opposite—looser restrictions on the trucking industry and its drivers... The proposals represent a wish list of the trucking industry, including allowing significantly longer and heavier trucks, and younger drivers. The industry spends heavily on lobbying and campaign contributions, giving largely to Republicans, who control both the House and Senate... Supporters insist the proposals actually will improve public safety by cutting the number of trucks on the road while also helping the trucking industry address a shortage of drivers. But critics reject the safety claims as ridiculous, saying the proposals would enrich the trucking industry, not protect the public... Truck safety advocates—many of whom have lost loved ones in big rig crashes—are dismayed over what they describe as the industry’s efforts to use Congress to achieve dangerous policy changes...
(Photo by Raymond Clarke / Flickr) -- FairWarning/In These Times, by BRIAN JOSEPH - Oct 28, 2015Labels: road safety, truck safety, truckers' safety
![[Valid Atom 1.0]](valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home