Safety Isn't Optional

By Warren Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 5, 2004; Page F01

We automotive journalists generally have a one-dimensional view of "performance."

We typically use the term to refer to vehicle speed and handling. Cars that go fast and do it without swerving, swaying, skidding or otherwise losing their grip on the road are deemed "performers."

We like going fast, especially on racetracks. We like taking cars to their limits, or at least imagining that we are capable of doing so. We don't like crashes. They ruin the fun.

But crashes ruin real-world life and driving every day.

As a result, according to auto industry regulators and executives worldwide, new criteria for vehicle performance must include a car's or truck's ability to protect its occupants in a crash. Moreover, the vehicle must prove itself compatible in the most incompatible of accidents -- one in which it strikes an unprotected pedestrian. Finally, "performance" must also measure a vehicle's ability to avoid hitting anything or anyone in the first place.

Those are tough standards. But they are made necessary by the growing carnage and mayhem on the world's roads.

The global statistics on vehicle crashes are alarming.

For example, one 2002 estimate, the latest from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's General Estimates System, put the number of vehicle crashes in the United States at 6.57 million, up from 6.32 million a year earlier. Even at 18,000 a day, those are limited counts, based only on police-reported crashes that resulted in substantial property damage, serious injury or death.

Estimates by groups such as the National Safety Council and other nonprofit, non-government safety-monitoring agencies say there are about 16 million vehicle crashes in the country every year -- or almost 44,000 a day.

All government and non-government agencies involved in tallying those collisions say that their collective price tag is astronomical -- in 2000, about $231 billion to cover the costs of the year's estimated 42,000 traffic fatalities, 5.3 million non-fatal injuries and 28 million damaged vehicles, according to a national vehicle crash-cost assessment published in 2002 by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

As bad as those U.S. numbers are, they are much worse in rapidly emerging automotive markets such as China, where millions of people with little driving experience are piloting their new cars and trucks among millions of pedestrians, motorcyclists and bicyclists -- many of whom seem to make up the rules of the road as they go along.

The result has been tragic. Officially, the Chinese government says 300 people die every day in vehicle crashes on the country's roads and byways. But the World Health Organization says that the real number is 680 traffic deaths a day. That compares with about 115 per day in the United States, where there are about eight times as many vehicles as in China, according to figures from the Chinese government and R.L. Polk & Co.

(I recently was in Shanghai for one week. I personally witnessed three non-fatal vehicle crashes. I simply gave up counting near misses. The day I left, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported a three-bus crash with 40 passenger injuries.)

Without urgent intervention, and with private-vehicle sales growing at a still-strong clip of 12 percent annually, the daily death toll on China's roads could reach 1,300 by 2020, the WHO predicted at a global safety conference in Geneva earlier this year.

Around the world, a total of 1.2 million people die in traffic accidents every year, according to the WHO.

The need to do more to make cars and driving safer is creating a multibillion-dollar product development and marketing opportunity for the world's leading automotive component and vehicle manufacturers. That sounds crass. But it is nothing short of the truth.

At automotive exhibits in Detroit, Geneva, Paris and Shanghai this year, automotive companies and their suppliers were just as keen to demonstrate their latest, greatest electronically controlled safety devices as they were to show off their newest offerings in horsepower, onboard entertainment systems and emissions controls.

That was especially true in Shanghai in early October at the 2004 meeting of Michelin's Challenge Bibendum, an annual exhibition of the world's most promising clean-car and automotive safety technologies.

On display were advanced passive safety technologies, those designed to protect drivers and passengers in vehicle crashes of about 35 miles per hour. Also shown were some concepts to reduce pedestrian injuries (something increasingly demanded by European and Asian governments) and advanced active safety technologies, such as electronic collision-avoidance devices.

There were also communications safety devices, such as General Motors Corp.'s OnStar system, which automatically calls law enforcement and medical officials to a crash location the instant the system detects an air bag deployment in an OnStar-equipped car or truck.

Many of these devices already have made their way into cars and trucks sold in North America, Europe and Japan, often as standard equipment. Others are on the way. Here are a few of the most notable examples:

• Passive safety

The bottom line here is that buckled seat belts are a must. They are the first line of defense for drivers and their passengers. Most automotive manufacturers and suppliers are equipping their vehicles with automatically tensioning seat belts, designed to pull properly buckled drivers and passengers back into their seats and hold them in the best-protected position in the event of a crash or rollover accident.

• Air bags

They are becoming more sophisticated and more plentiful. Frontal air bags are getting smarter. More of them are being designed to vary their deployment speeds based on the speed of the crash, and the position and size of the person sitting in front of the bag.

There are also side air bags, often installed in the sides of front seats, designed to increase protection for the occupant's upper body in a side-impact collision. Head and side-curtain air bags, among the newest bag offerings, are proving useful in reducing head and neck injuries and fatalities in rollover accidents. Companies such as Sweden's Autoliv Inc., Michigan-based Delphi Corp. and Germany's Siemens VDO Automotive AG have developed rollover sensors that deploy curtain air bags as soon as an imminent rollover is detected.

(Note: At this writing, many car companies are offering sensor-equipped curtain bags as options, generally at prices a bit below $1,000 per set. Buy them. They will do for you what a $900 moon roof or $2,000 audio system can't.)

• Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children (LATCH system)

This technology has developed over the past several years, primarily in response to findings that many infants and toddlers were dying in vehicle crashes because they were not properly restrained in their child-safety seats. LATCH systems now are required in practically all cars and trucks sold in the United States. Be sure to have your dealer, local police and/or fire department officials instruct you on how to properly use the LATCH system. It can save a child's life.

• Pedestrian safety

This is a work in progress, and in Europe it is receiving a major push. By 2010, the European Union Commission wants automotive manufacturers to produce cars and trucks that will be less injurious to pedestrians and bicyclists in vehicle accidents.

Several approaches are being studied. They eventually could affect the shape and styling of vehicles sold in the United States as well.

Siemens, for example, has been experimenting with its Siemens Restraint System, which partially relies on repositioning the battery, various engine components and the hood latch to create the equivalent of a softer landing zone for pedestrians who often are killed by the impact of their bodies slamming into the hood after being struck. Siemens also is looking at electronically adjustable bumpers that flex automatically when striking soft objects; and it is studying the feasibility of equipping cars with external air bags or foam-cushioned bumpers.

• Active safety

There is much going on here. Most new cars and trucks sold in the United States come with anti-lock brakes, which are designed to prevent wheel lock and loss of driver control in panic stops.

Now anti-lock brakes have been joined by algorithmic variations on the theme, including traction control, anti-slip devices and stability control. All are designed to reduce the loss of driver control, especially on slippery roads and during panic maneuvers. In more expensive cars, some of these systems are coupled with "electronic brake assistance," which is an anticipatory device that senses when a driver is about to hit the brakes hard, then does the job for him or her before the driver can fully depress the pedal.

For the record, the electronic braking systems so far are failing to win the hearts and minds of drivers, many of whom complain that they feel they are being "second-guessed" by cars equipped with the devices.

But traction control is winning kudos, especially in icy climates. Traction control reduces wheel spin on slippery surfaces, generally when starting the car or truck from a stop. It automatically uses a combination of braking power and engine-throttle control to reduce power flowing to the slipping wheels and to give them more traction.

Also becoming commonplace, and increasingly more sophisticated, are a variety of all-wheel-drive systems that operate without driver input -- automatically transferring power from slipping to gripping wheels. But keep in mind that all-wheel-drive systems essentially are for on-road use. Four-wheel-drive systems, often found on full-fledged sport-utility vehicles, generally have a four-wheel low gear and a locking differential system, the combination of which primarily is useful for off-road travel.

Eventually, sonar and radar collision-avoidance systems will be sold as standard equipment on many cars and trucks. These will include crash-avoidance systems for the front, side and rear ends of vehicles. In basic form, they will give the driver an audible or visual proximity warning alert, such as a beep, flashing light or combination of both, when his car is getting too close to another.

Many car companies, such as BMW, Cadillac and Mercedes-Benz, already use a version of that system to assist drivers in parking their vehicles without bumping into someone or something else.

And high-end car companies are taking the idea several steps further. For example, the Cadillac XLR roadster offers a patented, radar-controlled Adaptive Cruise Control system that sets the speed and following distance to the speed of the vehicle ahead. If the lead vehicle slows, the XLR's radar sensor slows the roadster to help maintain the XLR's following distance. When the lead car moves out of the way, or when traffic clears, the XLR resumes its original speed.

I tested the XLR's Adaptive Cruise Control system and found that it performed disgustingly well, especially on crowded highways where other drivers tend to cut in front of you willy-nilly, effectively allowing the XLR's radar to push you farther back into the crowd. I turned the system off to become, let's say, more competitive with the ambient traffic at median highway speeds.

That kind of behavior is problematic and could become a roadblock to establishing safety as a key element of vehicle performance, says Phyllis Genther Yoshida, senior technology policy analyst in the Commerce Department's Office of Technology Policy.

"In order for us to be successful in introducing new safety and clean-air technology, consumers must be willing to purchase and use the technology we're developing," Yoshida said in comments at the Michelin Challenge Bibendum in Shanghai.

"It's not enough for us to develop technology in the lab. We have to get that technology out there in the cars that consumers want, in cars that they see as fun and that they can love . . . and that are affordable. Otherwise, that technology stays on the shelf," she said.

"We need safer, cleaner cars," said Challenge Bibendum director Patrick Oliva. "But we also need proper driver behavior and proper traffic regulation and enforcement. Only when we have all of those things will the risks of traffic fatalities and injuries drop dramatically."

Warren Brown is The Post's auto columnist.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company