Mark MelletatThe premise is statistically straightforward, as Mark Melletat, director of field operations, explained: Collision mitigation systems could prevent 3,500 rear-end collisions, a benefit of $2.5 billion according to the company’s analysis of government highway crash statistics.
The newest version, OnGuard Active, is designed to reduce the severity of or prevent the 20 percent of those accidents that are related to stationary objects—and 30 percent of those crashes are fatal. The key to the upgrade is the ability to spot and respond automatically to a vehicle that has stopped in the road ahead.
Melletat emphasized the superiority of radar over vision systems in low-visibility situations, and also explained that OnGuard Active uses a high-resolution, multi-beam long and short radar. The wide-beam identifies objects in adjacent lanes (allowing the system to provide an “evasive maneuver check”) while the long beam identifies objects 650 feet ahead.
In a limited visibility situation, “essentially what the driver would see is nothing,” Melletat said. “What the radar sees is identification of those vehicles, understanding where they are positioned and if they’re an imminent threat.”
Additionally, the upgrade will add full-braking capability, compared to the current parameter settings with a 50% maximum. Additionally, the system has the ability to boost driver braking if more stopping power is indicated. Braking events are preceded by audio and visual effects in the cab, and a “haptic alert,” or physically alerting the driver by quickly pumping the brake pedal.
