Brussels, 17/02/2016 (Agence Europe) - During a public hearing on road safety organised by the European Parliament Transport Committee on Tuesday 16 February, Richard Cuerden, a road safety specialist at Engineering & Technology, said that crash tests between cars and pedestrians carried out in laboratories were not sufficiently adapted to real situations.
The question was posed by Olga Sehnalova (S&D, Czech Republic), who asked whether, in the context of the emission pollutant laboratory tests linked to the Volkswagen scandal, these crash tests carried out in laboratories really were representative of real situations. The researcher's response could not have been clearer: crash tests are carried out at a speed of 40 km/h and do not subsequently illustrate the variety of accidents that occur with pedestrians and cyclists. Cuerden also acknowledged that there was a lack of data in real conditions. His first recommendation also focused on the improvement of data collection in Europe and in this connection, he proposed the setting up of a European or even an international databank.
The researcher is also an author of a study into the impact of the volumes and weights of road vehicles on road safety and his recommendations involved a proposal to extend emergency braking systems, speed control mechanisms, as well as rear vehicle camera systems that are activated when reversing. He also proposed revision of the 78/2009 regulation on pedestrian protection vehicle approval, with particular attention on the upper parts of legs and the impact of windscreens on the human skull. He also suggested the introduction of smart safety belt mechanisms that reacted on the basis of the passenger's age and the scale of the crash, as well as the angle of the impact in question. In this respect, he put forward the idea of systematically equipping vehicles with lateral air bags, “as a kind of protection curtain”.
There were many questions raised by MEPs, which in particular focused on speed in urban areas, developments affecting pedestrian and cyclist behaviour, the question of noise generated by increasingly more silent vehicles (such as electric vehicles), vehicle lighting and the emergence of autonomous cars.
On the first point, MEPs support the idea of setting arbitrary speed limit in cities at 30 km/h. Cuerden supported this idea too. On the question of pedestrian and cyclist behaviour, he acknowledged that it was necessary to ensure training for citizens to ensure that both pedestrians and cyclists are more alert. He does not believe, however, that electric vehicles constitute a problem because the noise created by tyres on road surfaces would be louder than that emitted by driving at faster speeds or equal to 40 km/h.
Cuerden spent a lot of time on the question of autonomous cars. He believes that it is necessary to include this new kind of vehicle, “which will be on our markets much quicker than we think”, in European regulation. The scientist believes that these vehicles are an excellent way of reducing the number of injuries and fatalities at a time when the reduction rates in these areas are currently stagnating (see EUROPE 11281), given that the vast majority of accidents are due to human error. Nonetheless, he did provide a warning to his audience by pointing out this new generation of car did not constitute “a miracle solution” for reducing the number of fatalities on the roads. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)