Function to stop speedsters from using accelerator 'the way to cut road deaths'
Julie Power
Published: October 3, 2016 - 7:57PM
International road safety experts are calling for all vehicles to be fitted with speed warning devices, and drivers who exceed the speed limit may find their accelerators disabled by devices that are being considered in Australia.
Driving too fast causes 1.25 million road traffic deaths a year globally, and is a major contributor to the 6.9 per cent increase in deaths on Australian roads to 1275 in the year ending August 31.
Only 48 hours into Operation Slowdown this long weekend, NSW Police said they had caught 3176 motorists speeding (not including by fixed speed cameras), 428 more than this time last year.
As a range of drivers were caught speeding dangerously, including a P-plate driver who was alleged to be driving at 141km/h in a 110km/h zone and was over the legal limit for alcohol, NSW Police Acting Assistant Commissioner David Driver urged motorists to slow down.
At a special event at Safety 2016, a major injury prevention conference in Finland late last month, road safety specialists from the European Transport Safety Council said speeding was the single biggest contributing factor in fatal road crashes.
The road safety experts called for all European vehicles to be fitted with Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) devices. These use speed sign recognition and satellite information to warn drivers with sounds or message if they exceed the limit.
The council
launched a campaign on YouTube to build support for ISA, saying it had a huge potential to save lives.
Some devices, which have already been integrated into some new models of Ford cars, have an override function that can stop speeding drivers from using the accelerator until they return to the speed limit.
European research has found that a decrease in speed of even 1km/h could reduce road fatalities and injuries by as much as 4 per cent a year.
Oliver Carsten, Professor of Transport Safety, University of Leeds, argued that ISA was one of the most powerful technologies with the potential to improve road safety.
"There are a lot of technologies out there but, because speeding and speed choice is so crucial to risk, ISA has a bigger effect than pretty much any other system," he said.
In the YouTube video, he drives a Ford Galaxy, one of the first cars fitted with these systems. When he tries to accelerate over the speed limit in a 40km/h zone, the accelerator is disabled.
Australian road safety experts are also evaluating the effectiveness of these devices in stopping repeat offenders.
A Monash University trial of the devices on people who had been caught speeding found that motorists reduced the amount of time that they drove over the limit, but they quickly reverted to old speeding habits after the devices had been disabled.
In NSW, a trial found these speed-limiting and warning devices could save 35 lives and reduce injuries to road users by 1455 in the state per year.
To introduce drivers to these sorts of devices, which are already used by the trucking industry, Transport for NSW developed
Speed Adviser, a free app that uses NSW open source information to remind drivers of the speed limit.
It has also made NSW data publicly available to encourage other developers to use the information.
Research had shown that these intelligent speeding assistants had a definite benefit, said Bernard Carlon, the executive director of the NSW Centre for Road Safety.
Often people did not realise they were speeding, he said.
Drivers may talk about their "unconscious speeding" or say "I didn't even realise I was speeding", he said.
Like 140,000 others who have downloaded the app, Mr Carlon uses the app, and finds it useful.
"There does tend to be a theory that people in vehicles are like being in a cocoon, and separated from the rest of the world and not necessarily focused on the driving task," he said.
He could envisage this sort of device being used in a similar way to alcohol interlocks as a way of stopping recidivist speeders from repeating the same offence. And he was continuously reviewing the potential of these apps to reduce road trauma.
A Finnish study of fatal accidents in urban areas found nearly 30 per cent of pedestrians were killed in a 31 to 40km/h zone, and 40 per cent in a 41 to 50km/h zone, compared with 12 per cent in a 51 to 60km/h zone.
David Ward, the secretary general of the Global New Car Assessment Programme (Global NCAP) said ISA was now included in vehicle safety ratings by the
European New Car Assessment Programme.
"This reflects growing confidence that they can positively contribute to reducing road crash fatalities and serious injuries," he said.
London's buses will soon be fitted with these devices after a trial found an 18 per cent reduction in deaths where a vehicle was fitted with an advisory system, and a 37 per cent reduction in deaths where intervening systems, which cannot be turned off, disabled the accelerator after drivers had been warned that they were driving too fast.
However, some critics fear these apps are like Big Brother monitoring one's driving. Others worry they don't take into account driver behaviour.
Professor Ann Williamson, the director of the Transport and Road Safety Research at the University of NSW, warned that these devices - like most things - contained good and bad elements.
There was a risk that they could make drivers relax and rely too much on the device's warnings. And they make some situations worse.
"If you have an ISA system that's [sounding a] warning and I am trying to overtake, the constant dinging may be driving me crazy so, if I am overtaking and my heart rate is already up, that's not an advantage to the driver," she said.
Julie Power attended Safety 2016 with support from the ICFJ-WHO Safety 2016 Reporting Fellowship Program and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
04-10-2016, 05:02 PM
Function to stop speedsters from using accelerator 'the way to cut road deaths'
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