Ford Spends 2008 Working on Driver Safety Initiatives

Virtual Test Track Experiment (VIRTTEX), Ford’s advanced driving simulator, has been busy this year and will continue to be busy. Researchers are studying how vehicles should take care of their drivers by warning the drivers of potentially dangerous driving situations.

Customer driving clinics are test warning systems for Ford’s new backup system, the Cross Traffic Alert with Blind Spot Monitoring warning system. This system alerts drivers of traffic is approaching from the sides while they are backing out of a parking space. Planned for release in 2009, the system has three warnings. There is a flashing red light on the side mirror, an audible alert and a written warning on the instrument panel’s message center.

“New technologies such as radar, cameras, lasers and GPS will enable us to offer more safety and convenience features in the future,” said Jeff Rupp, manager, Active Safety, Research and Advanced Engineering at Ford’s Research and Innovation Center. “A key is identifying the kinds of warnings that drivers will find both effective and easy to understand.”

VIRTTEX debuted in 2001 as the first full-motion driving simulator in North America. So far VIRTTEX has examined driver preferences and reaction times with advanced early-warning systems. One such system is the Forward Collision Warning, a radar based system designed to help avoid or mitigate the effect of rear end collisions. Apparently some warning systems draw a faster reaction time for distracted drivers.

Ford is studying audible, visual and tactile warnings to see if they work better alone or in combinations as well as the intensity and pattern of warnings that work best. So far, there is evidence that drivers respond more quickly to certain audible alerts that are more intense and some combinations of warnings such as audio alerts backed up by visual warning reinforcement.

The best time to warn a driver in a potentially dangerous situation is another study. So far it seems that early warnings can be useful for distracted drivers but the same approach can frustrate attentive drivers by telling them something they have already anticipated.

Active safety technologies and research include:

• AdvanceTrac with RSC. This system which is exclusive to Ford- system uses two gyroscopic sensors to gauge the safety of the roll angle

• Collision Mitigation with paking. This system uses forward-looking radar to gauge an imminent frontal crash.

• Crash Avoidance Metrics Partnership.  Ford is involved in the Crash Avoidance Metrics Partnership team of government and industry leaders studying active safety technologies. The team also is studying vehicle-to-vehicle active technologies that will allow cars to “talk” to each other to better identify potentially unsafe conditions.