Maminirina Ranovona, Senior Engineer, Regulatory and Technical Affairs, Toyota Motor Europe
The pursuit of real-world safety has always been a core value for Research and Development at Toyota. The company firmly believes that its Pre-Crash Safety system is one of the most promising eSafety technologies in trying to reduce road fatalities.
It’s a situation that could happen to anybody. The driver was tuning the radio when he realized that the car in front was braking suddenly and hard. But it was already too late and he was about to crash. People have been distracted while driving since cars were invented. Some say driver distraction is the cause of most car crashes. According to European accident statistics, nearly 1.6m were injured and about 35.000 killed in about 1.2m accidents on Europe’s roads last year. About 20 per cent of these accidents are rear-end or front-to front and they result in more than 5,000 fatalities.
Stephen Stacey, General Manager of Regulatory and Technical Affairs, Toyota Motor Europe, says: “The only car manufacturer that was amongst the founding members of the pan-European eSafetyAware! Platform was Toyota and we are leading the efforts to raise awareness of eSafety technologies in vehicles.
“Using eSafety technologies needs to become as intuitive as putting on a seat belt. Deployment of this kind of innovative technology is highly dependent on consumer awareness and acceptance. This is where an event like eSafetyChallenge plays a key role by offering a unique opportunity to demonstrate the lifesaving potential of the technology to the right audience.”
Toyota Pre-Crash Safety has been designed to reduce collision speed and lower the likelihood of injury. Toyota engineers have continuously developed safety technologies based on the analysis and understanding of real traffic accidents. This has led to such remarkable world firsts as Vehicle Stability Control 1995 and the SRS curtain shield airbag in 1998. When considering the potential for rear-end and front-to front collisions, the same approach resulted in the development of a technology that could have a life-saving potential as high as Vehicle Stability Control: Toyota Pre-Crash Safety (‘PCS’).
This system uses a forward facing millimetre-wave radar to detect obstacles on the road ahead. If the system determines that a collision is likely to occur, it warns the driver by visual and audio means. It then pre-charges the brakes using Pre-Crash Brake Assist to give the driver instant boosted stopping power when the brake pedal is depressed. If the collision becomes unavoidable, PCS automatically applies the emergency brake whilst tightening seatbelts, thus reducing collision speed and lowering the likelihood of injury.
As the world’s first radar based car safety system, PCS was launched in February 2003 on the redesigned Toyota Harrier for the Japanese market. In August 2003, PCS with autonomous partial pre-crash brake function was added to the Toyota Celsior. In Europe, PCS made its first appearance on Lexus LS430 in 2004. Since then, it has been made available on successive Lexus models. It was introduced to the Toyota brand end of 2008 on the Avensis followed by the Prius and Land Cruiser few months later. Toyota aims to extend the availability to other models. In the near future, it will be introduced for the first time in the C-segment with the coming Lexus CT 200h.
Cascading Pre-Crash Safety to volume models is a priority for Toyota as is the continuing effort to develop new ideas for enhancing the technology. The latest Lexus LS features a further advanced version of the PCS, the so-called Advanced Pre-Crash System (A-PCS). The combination of a stereo camera located on the windshield with the millimeter wave radar enables the detection of a wider range of obstacles, including for the first time, pedestrians.
Another function of the A-PCS on the LS, known as Collision-Avoidance Assist, supports the driver's evasive steering manoeuvre by using Adaptive Variable Suspension (AVS) and electric Variable Gear Ratio Steering (VGRS) to change the suspension stiffness, steering gear ratios, and torque assist. In addition, the world's first Driver Monitoring System determines the direction of the driver’s face, by using a camera located on the steering column. If the driver's head turns away from road and a frontal obstacle is detected, the system will alert the driver with an audible warning and a short brake pulse.
An enhanced version of the Driver Monitoring System on the 2008 Japanese Toyota Crown monitors the driver's eyes to detect the driver's level of wakefulness. In March 2009, the redesigned Toyota Crown Majesta went even further with Front-Side PCS adding capability to detect potential side collisions primarily at intersections.
Toyota Pre-Crash Safety is a good example to illustrate how Toyota is working to realise its long term vision for safety based on the two directions: The first is to make life-saving technologies available for everyone. In that respect, eSafetyChallenge participants were rather impressed to realise that such an advanced technology was already available on volume cars like the Prius and Avensis.
The second is to continuously look for enhancements of the technology, making a new step everyday towards the ultimate concept of a collision-free vehicle.
Maminirina.Ranovona@toyota-europe.com
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