My dogs will do a " roll over " , for a Roveroli.
Posted on 09/14/2006 6:01:17 AM PDT by Cagey
WASHINGTON - The government, impressed by the promise of anti-rollover technology, is planning to require automakers to include electronic stability control devices on all new vehicles in the coming years.
The technology has been hailed by automakers, suppliers and safety advocates for its potential in reducing traffic deaths and rollovers. The government's top traffic safety official has said it could have the greatest affect on auto safety since the arrival of seat belts.
About 40 percent of new vehicles have it as standard equipment and auto industry officials expect it to be available on all vehicles by 2010. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is set to unveil proposed rules for stability control on Thursday that also will include testing standards for auto manufacturers. NHTSA officials have declined to release details.
One study found that stability control could lead to a reduction of 10,000 deaths a year if all vehicles had the technology, almost one-quarter of the more than 43,000 people killed on the roads annually.
"These are staggering statistics compared to most safety technologies that are installed on the vehicles today. This technology will save lives," said William Kozyra, president and CEO of Continental Automotive Systems, North America, a leading supplier of stability control.
Kozyra called it "the most important automotive safety technology of our generation."
The crash avoidance technology senses when a driver may lose control, automatically applying brakes to individual wheels to help make it stable and avoid a rollover. Many sport utility vehicles, vans and pickups have the equipment.
NHTSA Administrator Nicole Nason has said the agency will mandate the equipment, estimating it would save 10,600 lives when fully implemented into the fleet. During a July hearing before Congress, she said it "could be the greatest safety innovation since the safety belt."
Rollovers have had particularly fatal consequences, leading to more than 10,000 deaths a year despite accounting for only about 3 percent of all crashes. SUVs and other vehicles with high centers of gravity have been susceptible to rollovers.
Automakers have been receptive to the technology and have indicated little resistance in the decision to mandate the equipment because they have already been including it on their vehicles.
Ford Motor Co. announced Wednesday that it would make it standard equipment in all new vehicles by the end of 2009 while General Motors Corp. has said it will be included in all vehicles by the end of 2010. Virtually all Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles have it as an option and it has been standard on all Toyota SUVs since the 2004 model year.
Joan Claybrook, a former NHTSA administrator and head of Public Citizen, a consumer watchdog, called electronic stability control "breakthrough technology" but said it would be difficult to predict how many lives it could save.
Early in the development of the air bag, she said initial studies predicted it could save about 9,000 people a year, much higher than the 2,300 lives it saves annually.
"Until you get it into production and onto vehicles, you don't know how large the numbers are going to be," Claybrook said.
A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety earlier this year predicted 10,000 deaths could be prevented a year if passenger vehicles had the technology. The study found stability control reduced the risk of single-vehicle rollovers involving SUVs by 80 percent.
One of the benefits of stability control is that it doesn't require anything from the driver. While other crash avoidance technologies, such as lane departure warning, require the driver to react, stability control senses the vehicle veering out of control and stabilizes it.
"There really isn't any downsides that we're seeing," said Russ Rader, an Insurance Institute spokesman. Electronic Stability Control "is in a unique club with only seat belts and air bags for it's lifesaving potential."
Automakers caution that seat belts will remain the most essential tool in avoiding death or injury in a crash. Seat belts save an estimated 15,000 motorist a year.
Robert Yakushi, Nissan North America Inc.'s director of product safety, environmental, said the technology "shouldn't be characterized as a cure-all for all handling situations" but something that helps drivers maintain control in some situations.
"If everyone depends on vehicle stability control, I think, to save them in every situation, I think that builds overconfidence in the driver," Yakushi said, stressing that "the driver is key to vehicle safety."
Now people can drive with even less care.
I've got a Miata. It would suck to be in a roll over accident...but it is hard to think of a scenario that would cause it to roll over in the first place.
My dogs will do a " roll over " , for a Roveroli.
Funny picture. A car with the system turned off does not roll over - It slides. Now, an SUV on the other hand...
In the '60's and '70's, you never heard of rollover accidents. Oh yeah, there was the occasional guy who rolled his jeep or pickup, but that was it. Enter the SUV, beginning with the Samurai actually, and suddenly there are rollovers everywhere.
I've seen three rollover accidents in my life. Every one of them was an SUV. And yet in the test picture they show a car SLIDING. It is literally comical.
This car just needs a stiffer rear sway bar and a heavier right foot, then it woulnd't be pushing around the curve so badly.
All you have to do with that to roll is is slide your outside front wheel into a ditch at quite moderate speeds.
>>Don't [buy] a SUV and try to drive it like a sports car.
You may know what you're doing. There are many idiots, who don't.
I love it when idiots in SUVs are tailgating me going into an exit clover.
FWIW, the incremental cost to add stability control, to a vehicle with ABS, is peanuts.
IN other words, if the laws of physics say you are rolling, then it will roll.
Now, just how will adjusting individual tire speed automatically prevent a roll over if you go off the road and into a ditch (or down a mountainside, etc).
The technology only works while you are ON the pavement - and Miatas do that quite well, thank you.
Indeed Miatas work quite well on pavement, as does my old MG.
That being said, I drove a Toyota Land "Loser" at a Machine Design Best Ride competition a few years ago that had a stability/traction control system. You could get it a little out of shape, and once it detected wheel slip the brakes and throttle were taken away from the driver's control. You would continue in whatever direction you were going when the slip was detected, which may not work all that well on a curvy road!
A few months previous to this, George Jones half killed himself out driving drunk in one. George wouldn't have lasted as long as he has if he hadn't mastered doing the "recovery flick maneuver" after reaching into the back seat for a fresh drink. However, when he did that in this particular vehicle, it drove him straight into a bridge abutment.
At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, the more I hear of this new stuff, the better a carburetor, magneto, and manual transmission sound. ABS is nice as long as you aren't on gravel, dirt, grass or snow, assuming it doesn't take over with biased braking.
I rolled my brand new Chevy Blazer when I was hit by someone running a red light. I was doing about 50 mph. I did at least three complete circles, eventually landing on the drivers side and skidding for another half mile, with the door window broken glass giving my left arm an extreme case of road rash. The roof smashed to the body of the truck. Both air bags popped, giving me something known as air bag burn. I crawled out of the tiny window hole and sat on the curb, strangely feeling no pain at all. They don't call me the sport ute girl for nothing.
Oh yeah, no conflict of interest here.
More complex crap to drive up the cost of purchasing and maintaining a car. No safety systems can make up for roads full of barely competent, careless and distracted drivers.
I have a good friend in Chicago who purchased a Mercedes with this technology. He claims that this is the first thing you will switch off on an icy street.
I also heard that this device requires all wheel (not four wheel) drive in order to work properly.
My broken English in that post is all the reader needs to have in order to determine I haven't had any coffee yet.
It certainly takes the fun out of driving a powerful rear wheel drive vehicle.
Life isn't nearly as fulfilling without "power on" oversteer.
I had a Mercedes with it, just 2 wheel drive. It was fun to drive on slippery stuff.. Worked great and put a big exclamation mark on the dash when it kicked in..
all courtesy of Ralph Nader. Since 1970 the real cost of a new auto has doubled. Then a cost cost half a year's salary of a beginning teacher. Now it costs a whole year's salary. So, we drive them longer. I would love to see a cost bnefit analysis of driving old cars in deteriorating condition vs the much maligned policy of planned obsolence which had us driving cars under warranty and full employment at auto companies. I suspect that the industry had it right, and all the government interferance has not really promoted the common good.
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