Meritor, Takata forge safety system alliance

Meritor Wabco Vehicle Control Systems and TK Holdings, Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Japan’s Takata Corp., plan to establish a strategic alliance to jointly develop new active safety systems for the North American commercial vehicle market.

Under this agreement, Meritor Wabco will market and distribute Takata’s SafeTrak lane departure warning (LDW) systems, dubbed the Truck Interface Module (TIM) and Fleet Management Portal. The company noted it’s designed to assist a driver in avoiding an unintentional departure from a lane or the road by providing warnings to the driver when certain events occur.

“Takata’s products perfectly complement and enhance our current active safety systems such as OnGuard and SmartTrac,” noted Jon Morrison, president of Meritor WABCO, in a statement. “We’re confident our customers will appreciate and embrace still another progressive step in what we call our ‘Pyramid of safety.’”

Morrison noted an added bonus to end users from Takata’s products will be extensive yet streamlined data management capability to contribute to smarter fleet safety management.