Another Senseless Avoidable Tragedy: Princeton crash leaves
one person dead, two with life-threatening injuries. The 30,000+ yearly US roadway
deaths are but a grim statistic until one is a friend or loved one. Then it hits home like a ton of bricks. It is even
more tragic when one realizes that existing inexpensive technologies, like those summarized in these pages,
could have intervened and prevented, or at least diminished the severity, of this accident. A BMW, with a
young man in the driver’s seat, traveling on a residential street posted as a school zone, crashed head-on into an
unoccupied car parked on the other side of the on-coming lane. The crumbled cars continued into a 3rd car
parked in a driveway killing one of its occupants and severely injuring the other. Everyone in the community is
devastated, as am I, not only because I know and revered both, but also because this is a perfect example of an
accident that market-ready technologies could have prevented. The automotive research community has
developed technologies that can keep cars in their lane of travel, can sense in a timely manner impending
collisions and warn the driver to brake. Most importantly, if the driver fails to apply sufficient brake force, the
technology will tighten the seat belts and automatically increase the brake force to avoid, or at least reduce the
severity, of the collision. It is imperative that each of us do all we can to accelerate the availability and market
acceptance of these technologies so that we can begin to put an end to such tragedies. It is essentially a
certainty, that each so equipped car will not allow a driver to cause this kind of carnage: 1 dead, 2 seriously
injured, one charged with death by auto. All senseless and technologically avoidable!
Calendar of Events:
The Premier Road Vehicle Automation Event in North
America. Transportation Research Board’s premier multidiscipilary research and policy conference focused on Road
vehicle Automation will take place at Stanford University on July 16-19, 2013. If you are actively involved in road vehicle
automation and would like to actively contribute to the success of this conference by becoming a patron please contact
me at alaink@princeton.edu.
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Is Technology Making Us Safer? http://www.vehicleautomation.org/share
their perspectives and forecasts for future in-car technology and autonmous vehicles inc. NHTSA Chief David Strickland.
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On Wednesday, April 10 @ 14:15 I will be speaking on “ Impact of Driverless Cars on the
Future of Airports”, and on Thursday, April 11 @ 16:00 I will be making a presentation in 101 Sherrered to the ITE Met
section on “Smart Driving Cars: Where Are We Going? Why Are We Going? Where Are We Now? How Might We Get
There? Where might We End Up? Implications for ITE and how it can help.”
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TRB Webinar: Guidelines for the Use of Mobile LIDAR in Transportation Applications, April 11, 2013.
http://www.trb.org/Main/Blurbs/168636.aspx?utm_medium=etmail&utm_source=Transportation%20Research%20Boa
rd&utm_campaign=TRB+E-Newsletter+-+03-19-2013&utm_content=Web&utm_term=
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2013 Annual Mtg., Nashville, TN, April 22-24. Amazingly little about SafeDrivingCars. Doesn’t
seem to be on board.
From the Public Sector: Request for Information (RfI) from US DoT on Surface Transportation System
Automation. Please provide your input to many very deep research questions. Deadline: Tue. April 23 @ noon. My
response will be at http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/Kornhauser_%20Response2AutomationRfI.pdf
European Update: Workshop: Automation in Road Transport
(contains links to participants &
presentations)
….As background if you haven’t read it: from June 29,2011: Definition of necessary vehicle and infrastructure
systems for Automated Driving Final report SMART 2010/0064
Best videos from Workshop: Automation in Road Transport
(contains links to participants & presentations)
Automated Steering Avoidance of imminent collision on Frozen Lake done Feb 23, 2013. Views outside the
vehicle of automated collision avoidance maneuvers involving only steering (no differential wheel braking. Views
from outside the vehicles:
This is BIG!!!
Continental and BMW Group Working Together to Develop Freeway-Grade Highly Automated Driving
BMW Press Release
Continental Press Release
This is BIG, not only because they have “an agreement to jointly develop an electronic co-pilot for this purpose”,but because…
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it aligns a component supplier with a manufacturer. Where does this leave Daimler and VW/Audi? To join up with Bosch?? What about
Delphi? Join back with GM on this one?? Where does this leave the other manufacturers; will they align? The competitive race to
attract consumers to the showroom has really heated up.
They’ve realized that safety is now clothed in comfort & convenience. Together, they make a powerful message to the car buying public.
This technology will draw people into the showrooms. The wake-up call was delivered by the emergent competitor,
, rather
than government edicts or rule-makings. “… [I]n capitalist reality…, it is not [price] competition which counts but the competition from the new
commodity, the new technology…- competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the
profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives.” Joseph A Shumpeter (1883-1950)
mailto:alaink@princeton.edu