Blind Spot Detection and Volvo’s Cycle Alert
Blind spot detection - or BSD for short - is an ever-evolving field of technology among driver aids that range from passive systems with a side view of the road via such means as the fresnal lens and wide-lens mirror - to 360 degrees of electronic coverage around your vehicle.
Blind spot detection is a key technology among driver aids that provide 360 degrees of electronic coverage around your car, whether you are at speed or moving slowly. This circle of safety now also includes such things as cruise control and parking sensors.
BSD was developed by Volvo with the introduction of an automated blind spot detection system into one of their cars back in 2005. BSD tracks traffic just behind you as well as what’s coming alongside staying active until the car in the adjacent lane is in front of you.
The system has been adopted and adapted, to be called blind spot detection, blind spot monitoring, and any number of things depending on the maker (Audi call it Side Assist, Infiniti’s call it blind spot warning etc etc) but it all amounts to the same thing. Tech to prevent taking conscious/unconscious risk.
This technology has since been modified (so often to the tune of two or three proximity sensors over the left-hand wheel arch of the vehicle) to fit HGVs with a particular purpose to identify vulnerable road users, but to what extent is this type of (proximity sensor) blind spot detection useful in ‘seeing’ vulnerable road users in blind spots and to what extent is it driving down work related road risk? And if so many collisions are due to road user behaviour, should we not be looking at addressing that road user behaviour at source? More importantly, with all this technology at our fingertips what, of it, should we be mandating?
The answer is more difficult to ascertain than we would perhaps hope, as has been well documented by Cycle Alert in recent months and bought to the attention of the House of Lords.
Cycle Alert sees the matter as one of public safety, while other describe it as one of consumer choice, believing that the operators should decide whether/what systems should be installed. In many ways, the debate echoes that over seat belts, air bags and other auto safety features that were once optional and are now standard.
But while TfL are slow to respond on a recommended safety standard for retrofit technologies, Volvo are already way ahead of the game by identifying that technology that prevents and restricts conscious risk taking is not enough, and that a technology that helps the road users change to safer behaviour is needed to work in tandem with their BSD. Volvo have recognised the needs for a means of communication that involves both cyclist and the driver with the introduction of its own cycle alert type system that, together with POC helmets uses cloud-based technology to provide the communication stream motorist and cyclist.
“There’s a lot of focus on safety and active technology in our vehicles,” Bendrik continued. “With maturing technology, that connected part actually [offers] safety not only for the passengers in the vehicles but extends that safety to road users around our vehicles in all environments,” said Klas Bendrik, Volvo VP and CIO.
It’s part of their mission statement, that ‘no-one is killed or injured in a Volvo by 2020’. Volvo’s founders named human ‘safety’ as its number one priority back in the 1930s and their own cycle alert warning system is testament to that.
