There’s been a lot of concern lately about those monster utes seen on the streets lately.
Well, it seems someone is paying attention to the potential danger they represent and testing will begin soon on emergency features designed to stop big utes from killing other road users.
The Australasian New Car Assessment Program – the people who strap crash test dummies into cars and crash them – will test auto emergency braking, pedestrian detection and lane-keeping assistance features in full-sized pick-up trucks in a new push to make roads safer.
News.com reported some blunt assessments from the secretary-general of the Euro NCAP Michiel van Ratingen.
“For passenger cars, most of them kill people inside the vehicle, so you have to basically protect them inside the vehicle,” he says.
“For heavier vehicles, the problem is primarily outside the vehicle because they kill a lot of people, vulnerable road users and people in other cars.
“Therefore … the focus has to be on avoidance, not on protecting one or two persons that happen to be in the truck, right?
“They are not the prime victim here.”
An investigation by America’s Insurance Institute for Highway Safety examined more than 18,000 crashes involving pedestrians.
It found that cars with a bonnet height greater than 40 inches (101.6cm) “are about 45 per cent more likely to cause fatalities in pedestrian crashes than cars”.
What do you think of the big truck on our roads?
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