Garrett Engineers, Inc. - This Month's Issue

This Month's Issue

Oct. '07 President's Message

President’s Message: SAE Conference

Last month, I had the opportunity to attend an SAE conference in Ashburn, Virginia at the NTSB Training Center. The conference was titled “Highway Vehicle Event Data Recorder Symposium: 2007 Update”. There were approximately 170 registered attendees.

There were numerous presentations including: EDR and Legal Issues, EDR Standards, EDR Data Validity, Global Initiatives and Perspectives, Insurance Industry Perspectives, Passenger Car EDR Data Case Studies and Commercial Vehicle EDR Applications.

While our company tends to focus on the crash data that is available to be downloaded using Vetronix equipment, it was instructive to see the broader definition of EDR used by the wider parts of the industry and even outside our industry.

Dr. Joseph N. Kanianthra, Associate Administrator for Vehicle Safety Research, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation gave a presentation that discussed US highway deaths-both the absolute number (which for the past few years has pretty well been stable in the range of the low forty thousands per year) and the fatality rates per million miles driven (which continues to drop).

He also discussed causes and had a nice pie chart which described the usual suspects-drunk driving, drowsy, bad surface conditions, distractions, erratic driving and so on. What surprised me was the figure given for vehicle defects. That was listed as 2%, which was much higher than I would have guessed.

We heard a good presentation on a program that Safeco Insurance is sponsoring in the Midwest for teen drivers. The program installs a “Drive Cam” that records two views-one of the road ahead (essentially what the driver sees) and a second view of the driver. The recordings are downloaded and reviewed by both the teen driver and their parents on a weekly basis. We watched three actual driving experience videos.

The first video showed a young lady driving down a boring straight two-lane country road. Up ahead, on the right, was a car stopped at a stop sign on an intersecting road. As she drew close to the stopped car, it suddenly pulled out in front of her. The camera that showed her face recorded her surprise and the expletive that immediately followed. She quickly swerved to the left, missing the other car by inches. Now that she was in the wrong lane, she was looking forward at the grill of an oncoming car, closing in on her at over 100 mph. Quickly she swerved back into the right hand lane, averting a crash by a fraction of a second. She had escaped disaster by the thinnest of margins. The presenter pointed out that everyone in the room, in an identical situation, would have crashed with our slower reaction times-it was her teenaged reaction times that saved her (and the grace of God). The post incident review with her parents reinforced her correct actions and the necessity of being ever vigilant.

The second video showed two teen-aged sisters driving down a similar country road. The driver kept looking down for two and three seconds at a time. She was text messaging a friend. Each time she spent more time looking down and each time she veered closer to the edge of the road, missing mailboxes and poles by inches. Her sister was daydreaming-none of the near misses registered with her. Finally, her right wheels wandered into the gravel on the edge of the road and she looked up in time to swerve back onto the highway before hitting a fence. The driver and her sister laughed about the chastisement that they knew they would receive from their parents at the weekly review. When the review came, no one was laughing. The driver then saw the telephone pole that preceded the fence. She never saw it while driving, and how it missed her sister by inches. After the review she permanently gave up the practice of “IMing” while driving.

The third video was similar, this time the driver was simply going too fast for a curve and drove across the road into a field. She put the car in reverse and backed back to the road and continued without further incident. The weekly review and feedback with her parents was fruitful. The presenter reported a 40 % decrease in teen crashes by participants in the program compared to non-participants.

Similarly, Frito Lay has installed drive cams in their over the road trucks, to give immediate feedback to their drivers. These drive cams begin recording when the vehicle experiences a sudden turn or heavy braking, and record for a minute or so until they turn off again. They document the driver and roadway to show what happened. The program has been extremely effective in reducing costly unsafe driver behaviors.

In Las Vegas, Veolia Transportation, the largest private transportation provider in the US, has installed video recording devices on the bus lines that cover the road ahead, the driver, the doorways and in some cases, the passenger aisles. This has greatly reduced prohibited driver actions (such as cell phone use) and has documented the actions of other vehicles when crashes occur, proving who caused the accident. Additionally, claims involving rider injuries have dramatically decreased, now that passenger actions are recorded.

We had several speakers report on international developments. This highlighted the fact that there is no single body that has jurisdiction over industry standards. In Europe, ISO standards are used. In the US, SAE has several committees working on the development of standards. The NTSB has areas of jurisdiction, as does USDOT and NHTSA. As technology improves, new standards adoption becomes a moving target. Of course, each manufacturer has its own idea of what is best, and in the area of safety, they will not share information because safety is an area of competitive advantage.

Aside from making life easier on accident reconstructionists, let me give you another reason why common, universal standards are important. Dr. Richard Hunt gave a talk on his perspective as an emergency room physician. When a crash occurs and an ambulance is dispatched, timely treatment is imperative. The emergency response personnel arrive, evaluate, treat and then transport. They have to choose which hospital to take the crash victims. The closest community hospital will not have the same facilities as a Level 1 Trauma Center. Dr. Hunt talked about losing many patients because they went to a community hospital. If you are severely injured, care at a Level I trauma center lowers the risk of death by 25%. This is a really big deal. Severe internal injuries are not always apparent in a triage situation. What if the EMTs could download the EDR from the crashed cars to determine the G forces the occupants experienced? This would greatly improve their on-scene diagnosis and save many lives. But there is no standard interface, nor software, nor data format for this to happen.

My final observation is that if you are under 40, your grandchildren will never learn to drive a car like you did. Lane departure monitoring, GPS real time tracking, onboard recording cameras, forward looking radar for cruise control, and cars that parallel park themselves are already here. The time is coming when the driver will become redundant.

Sept. '07 President's Message

President's Corner
Sometimes you just need a break. In this Garagram issue we will defer the expert and case of the month and pull out some offbeat definitions that we filed away for a break from the hot summer. We cover- Government Pipe Specifications, Pun with Monks, and Occupational Descriptions
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August '07 President's Message

President's Corner

President's Message: Be Quick

We received a mid-week assignment by telephone to investigate a vehicular brake failure. A heavy duty, four door pickup truck with a lift kit and extra large tires, rear-ended a car at the bottom of a freeway exit ramp (apparently with very little damage to the truck). It was owned by a used car company and a prospective buyer was concluding a test drive (!). The driver was unable to stop the truck in time at the bottom of the ramp before striking the next car.

Brake failure was the reason he gave for the accident. The dealer sold the truck that Saturday. We told them that we could still inspect the vehicle, but they were unwilling to call the buyer and tell them, "A previous prospective buyer of your shiny new truck rear-ended another car earlier this week and claimed brake failure-we just want to make sure that your truck is safe".

I guess I understand why-but the next few times I'm stopped at the bottom of the off ramp, I'm watching the rear view mirror for a big four door pickup approaching fast.

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August '07 Case of the Month

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