Ken Freund
I’ve always been crazy about anything with an engine.
After years of pestering my father, he finally let me drive a car - at nine years of age. At 14 I taught myself to drive stick shifts and then how to ride motorcycles. Later, I also learned to fly and have had my pilot’s license for 22 years. Working on, riding, driving, restoring, photographing and writing about all these wonderful machines has always been my passion. I've been an auto vo-tech and smog test instructor, certified master technician, vehicle inspector, shop foreman, service manager, service director, and shop owner. Over the years I’ve owned about 35 bikes and 50 cars and trucks, a lot of which I wish I had never sold!
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Are Safety Regulations Going Too Far?
The European Commission wants to require electronic “nannies” that can overrule the driver. In a recent presentation to the Automotive Electronics Congress in Paris, France, Reinhard Schulte-Braucks, chief of the EC’s automotive division, announced the Commission’s plans for vehicle regulations for the upcoming decade. These often are adopted worldwide soon afterward.
The proposed safety regulations could mandate vehicle electronics that make driving decisions for you. Vehicles would be required to apply the brakes without driver input if onboard sensors decide that a crash is imminent. This sensor-based braking control would be mandatory by 2014 or 2015.
Schulte-Braucks says that if sensors calculate an accident is possible, they would give the driver a warning about 2 seconds before impact and at 1.6 seconds from impact, if there is no driver action the vehicle will stop itself. He also said this be the first rule that gives control to the vehicle’s electronic systems. This technology is referred to in the auto industry as active-safety or collision-avoidance technology. Several manufacturers have started equipping some models with some active systems already.
Research by Frost & Sullivan in March 2006, polling 2,013 Europeans in six countries determined that 89% believe using electronics to improve braking is important or very important. I believe that pilots, ship captains and drivers all should have full control over their vehicles and should be responsible for their actions. What happens if you have to swerve to avoid being hit, but your braking system overrides your action and keeps you in front of that errant oncoming vehicle? On the other hand, giving overriding authority to an electronic system makes some sense, because there are many bad drivers. To achieve higher levels of safety, should we continue to lower driving standards and responsibility to the lowest common denominators, or should we raise the driving standards and tests?
