New Technologies to Reduce Road Accidents

It is mid-morning in central Brussels, and the wide streets skirting the Cinquantenaire Park are almost traffic-free. Ahead of me lies 500m of open road. The speed limit is 50kmh, a screen on the dashboard of my Volvo V70 tells me.

The car’s top speed is 195kmh. I shift up through the gears and accelerate. Within seconds, I hit 50kmh, then 60, then 65. But something odd is happening beneath my right foot. The accelerator pedal has stiffened and is pushing back, like an overloaded leg-press at the gym. I can’t keep my foot down. The silent message is unmistakable. You’re speeding! Slow down! Right now!

“You feel the pressure?” asks my passenger, Johan de Mol. “Fight it for too long and you will develop a very muscular leg.”

A Ghent University academic, de Mol is studying the effectiveness of such systems to stop speeding, known as Intelligent Speed Adaptations (ISA).

I ease off until we are within the speed limit. Below 50kmh, the weight under my foot eases. But for the pesky accelerator pedal, I reflect, maybe I was another road accident statistic about to happen.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), more than 1.2 million people worldwide die every year as a result of car crashes. This figure represents an average of 3242 people dying every day around the world. In addition to these deaths, between 20 million and 50 million people globally are estimated to be injured or disabled every year.

In Europe, more than 125,000 people a year are killed with around 2.4 million Europeans injured or disabled in traffic accidents annually. In 2005 alone, the number of casualties equalled the populations of Paris or Rome. The number of deaths is the equivalent of a large passenger airline crash with no survivors, every day of the year.

Australia has a staggering death rate, with over 1600 people killed on our roads each year. This is a rate per capita much higher than most European countries, including Italy, France and Switzerland. The annual economic cost of road accidents in Australia has been conservatively estimated to be at least $18 billion a year.

The main causes of road deaths are the same everywhere: speed and alcohol, says the Brussels-based European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), a pan-European non-governmental road safety body. Many governments have urged drivers to reduce speed and brought in tough drink-driving laws, yet the carnage continues.

There is an alternative: new technologies. Here are four of the best from Europe, for drivers who can’t or won’t modify their dangerous driving habits – and for sensible drivers, too. The technologies are not yet readily available in Australia, but if they prove successful in Europe, it won’t be long until they’ll become mainstream.