SAFETY - QUO VADIS

摘要

Due to the quantum leaps in occupant protection, (1) the improvements and the use of seat belts, (2) the introduction of head and thorax protecting airbags in frontal and lateral collisions, (3) the implementation of real world frontal and lateral crashes, the number of fatalities could be reduced significantly in the developed countries over the last decades. Nevertheless, worldwide approx. 3500 people die in traffic accidents every day, and the number of accidents is increasing. In order to reverse this negative trend, the focus of automotive safety must be enhanced from occupant protection (passive safety) to accident avoidance (active safety). A major step is already underway with the implementation of the Electronic Stability Control, the 2nd most effective safety system after seat belts. Similar benefits are anticipated through Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) which address driver errors responsible for 90 % of all accidents: By warning the driver in critical situations before intervening, they accommodate the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic ("the driver must control the vehicle at all times and in all circumstances"), however they cannot fully utilize the potential of predictive-preventive systems:(1) Convenience features may not be always 100 % fail-safe, which the driver may not be aware of. (2) If "assistants" always pay attention to hazards, warning the driver or even semi-autonomously maneuver the vehicle, the driver's attention may decrease.(3) In order to avoid false positives, warnings are issued approximately 2.5 seconds before time to collision (TTC). This may be too early for attentive drivers (nuisance), but too late for drivers with a longer reaction time (warning dilemma).(4) Since interventions typically occur only one second before TTC, valuable time has been lost if the driver does not, or (too) late, or even inappropriately react to a warning, and in many cases, a collision cannot be avoided any more.As a result, the ADAS co-pilots must be enhanced to temporary auto-pilots: The HAZARD-pilot will take control over the vehicle in challenging maneuvers even before a critical situation may develop: prevention instead of warning. The AUTO-PILOT will be initiated by the driver in specific scenarios when piloting a car is boring or painful, i.e. in traffic jams. In order to enable such Temporary Autonomous Driving (TAD), all ADAS functions must accommodate the Automotive Safety Integrity Levels (ASIL) derived from the ISO 26262 standard. This will require numerous predictive sensors around the vehicle (sensor fusion), intelligent software to evaluate the sensor data, along with powerful computers to process the highly sophisticated algorithms.