ECF co-signed a letter last week along with a number of other respected European organisations from all walks of political life, including safety experts, consumer groups, transport police, environmental campaigners, city authorities, and road accident victims (see the letter for the full list) that was sent to the European Parliament IMCO committee, and to officials of EU member States.

In the letter we express our concern that the motor vehicle industry organization ACEA is attempting to water down and weaken an excellent legislative proposal from the European Commission.

The General Safety Regulations is EU legislation that lays down the testing and requirements of the safety technologies and designs that all new motor vehicles must be fitted with (including all cars, trucks, buses etc.) It means that vehicle manufacturers do not have to conform to 28 different testing procedures across the EU, rather, like many other products, the vehicle has to conform to one set of requirements and can then be placed on the EU single market.

The current set of regulations of vehicles safety technologies has been a resounding success particularly for those inside the vehicle, and has contributed to saving many lives and a near constant year on year fall of fatalities. However now we have the opportunity to make mandatory in all new vehicles some revolutionary new tech to focus on those outside the vehicle.

The European Commission proposed after lengthy stakeholder consultation (in which ECF participated) and three scientifically rigorous cost/benefit analyses the following technologies to be mandated for all new vehicles.

Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) – this would be the crowning achievement of European Union if the Parliament and Member States agree on including this technology. ISA assists the driver keep to the speed limit, through a combination of GPS and speed limit sign recognition the vehicle knows the speed limit, as the driver reaches the speed limit the driver is warned, if he/she goes above the limit the driver is warned through feedback on the pedal with increasing pressure and haptic feedback. The fuel is limited to the engine and the vehicle slows to the limit. This can be overridden by the driver making his/her intentions clear by pushing further down on the pedal. It is estimated that this technology will save 20-25% of lives on the road!

Other technologies include; Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) for vehicle to vehicle but also vehicle to pedestrian/cyclist; a direct vision standard, and mandatory for all trucks so the driver can see into the blind spots around the vehicle; and a truck turning assist for warning drivers if cyclists/pedestrians are in the blind spot. And there are others like tyre pressure monitors, distraction/tiredness monitors, etc. the full final commission proposal is here, and annex here

If the Parliament and Council manage to hold their nerve and keep the Commission proposal intact then it has been conservatively estimated that around 26,000 lives will be saved over the next 12 years or so. Of course this would include many of those outside the vehicle currently killed as a great deal of this proposal focusses also on those outside the vehicle.

At the heart of this proposal though is the intervening Intelligent Speed Assistance. It acts as a multiplier to all the other passive and safety features. If the car is travelling too fast it doesn’t matter how good the AEB or the passive design of the bonnet is. At too high speeds no amount of good design will undo the natural physics of the lack of friction of tyres on tarmac, or the impact of solid vehicle on flesh. Because that is the crux of the issue that we are dealing with, solid objects crashing into flesh and bone, and taking energy out of the transport system will allow all the other safety features to work much more effectively. Unfortunately it is this technology that the vehicle industry would like to water down to an annoying warning light on the dashboard.

After three years of rigorous cost/benefit analysis[1] looking at how these systems will interact together, how they rely on each other, an industry funded report has been published which claims that ISA is less beneficial. However in order to do this it seems that it looks at the benefits of each technology separately from each other as if we will have an AEB vehicle, and an ISA vehicle and one with better passive safety (using less data than the original European Commission report by the way). ISA looks less beneficial in this way, as do all the passive safety technologies, and the Direct Vision standard for trucks.

ECF is very concerned that this is misrepresenting the ‘real world conditions’ of vehicles. Vehicles will be fitted with AEB and with passive safety, so why exclude them when looking at the benefits of ISA? Our concern is with cherry-picking results in order to undermine the intervening Intelligent Speed Assistance. Particularly when we have already had a three year, stakeholder attended, publicly funded, detailed and scientifically rigorous cost/benefit report, to which the industry contributed, that has already detailed the effectiveness of ISA.

The reason ECF co-signed this letter with these other organisations is that we want MEPs and Member States to know they have the support of cyclists, pedestrians, road safety community, police organisations, victims organisations, standards representatives, city representatives, and environmental campaigners to defend the commission proposal, and to include an intervening ISA, passive safety and Direct Vision for trucks as well as all the other technologies. We have an opportunity to have these lifesaving technologies in all new vehicles, not just the high end, expensive vehicles, but as a standard. Drivers deserve to feel in control of their vehicle, to know the speed limit in a clear and intuitive way and to be assisted in keeping to it. Cyclists and pedestrians also deserve to feel safe from vehicles that respect the speed limits. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to lock-in a raft of amazing vehicle technologies for the safety of all EU citizens.

If you would like to support MEPs and ask them to defend the European Commission proposal, particularly for keeping an intervening Intelligent Speed Assistance, then you can contact them here

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/search.html

Enter Your Country in ‘Country’

Enter Committees in ‘Political Bodies’

And ‘Internal Market and Consumer Protection’ in the drop box to the right.

Those are all your MEPs that will be dealing with this file, I’m sure they would like to hear from you.