Demystifying RTO Queries - Vehicular Safety
Anil Chhikara, MLO (Projects), Transport Department, Government of Delhi

Question: What is the vehicular safety?

Answer: The vehicular safety stands for the measures to prevent the motor vehicle accidents and reduction in severity of accidents. There are two types of safety measures that are designed for and incorporated in vehicles. Measures incorporated to prevent and to minimise accidents are called 'Active Safety' features and measures aimed at reducing and minimising severity of damages after the accidents are known as 'Passive Safety' features.

Question: What are the active safety features?

Answer: Active safety refers to the preventive measures to avoid the accident or the systems that work before accidents, for example, robust designing of chassis, suspension, steering, braking and dynamic behaviour of the vehicle and other safety measures that can reduce the physiological stress of the occupant arising from vibrations, noise and climatic conditions. To build this safety, the noise deadening materials are used to dampen the vibrations, stress, etc. Similarly, the feature controlling air temperature, air humidity and rate of flow of air through passenger compartment also aims at reducing the physiological stress.

 
There are quite a few safety improvement systems, on which the work is going on currently, like:

a) Adaptive Cruise Control Brakes: This is a closed loop and the computerised closed loop system. The braking of vehicle is initialised if any obstruction comes in between on the way of speeding vehicles. The radio waves discharged from the vehicle and received through onboard radio wave computers assist the driver in braking, as the distance between the vehicle and the obstruction gets shorter. The braking action is of soft kind, which can slow the vehicle speed, but stopping of vehicle would be carried out by the driver. Technologically similar systems are used for informing and guiding the driver as to in which lane to continue or about the safe-lane changing zone.

 
b) Driver Information System - alerts the driver if a pedestrian comes on the way.

c) Night Vision System: This system provides the visibility in the dark when ordinary headlamp illumination may not be adequate for the driver.

In the night vision system, the heat disseminated by any animal or human being is captured through radiowaves by sensors to microprocessors and magnified through computerised imaging system in front of driver. The normal eyes cannot see such distant creatures but with the help of night vision system, drivers have additional eyes to look even in dark outside.

d) Anti-Slip Regulation (ASR) system facilitates vehicle to move backward and ensure uniform load distribution, while Anti-Skid Brake System (ABS) provides pulsating braking action protection control system which prevents skidding of vehicle on turning at high speed or spinning of tyres.

e) Adaptive Lighting System - This system gives a light reflection, rotation of light dispersal prior to the vehicle turning, which prevents the accidents and aids the driver's judgement in different situations. Also, headlamp levelling and headlamp focus are adjusted automatically in accordance with the vehicular body position from the road surface.

f) Driver Sleep Alert System is a recent development that does not allow driver drowsiness by stimulating seat vibrations or buzzer sound. Even the vehicle stops if the system detects that driver is feeling sleepy. Such systems are required to be individually programmed for sensing through eyes napping, physiological changes along with magnetic field variation during driver's conscious or sub-conscious stages and the sensing from straight road marking and rapid swerving of steering when drivers are feeling sleepy. The digital wind-shield information also helps the driver in accident avoidance.

Question: What are the features of passive safety?

Answer: The passive safety aims at reducing and minimising damages/injuries to passengers and passers-by resulting from accidents.

 
A. Exterior Safety: seeks to reduce the severity of an accident by providing cushioned impact to a victim outside the vehicle. The use of energy absorbing materials, which can absorb the impact are mounted on the front side of the motor vehicle to dampen the impact on the pedestrians or other objects hit by the vehicle. The collision severity is also reduced by new shapes of motorcars in which bonnet is fixed with soft rivets.

B. Interior safety: The interior safety is meant to safeguard the driver and other occupants in a vehicle against the severity resulting from the accidents. The following systems are the part of interior safety:

 
a. Strengthening passenger compartment by using protection bars, space frame and by designing and constructing vehicles using high strength low weight (HSLW) materials, material eyes, padded interiors, laminated glass, etc. The air bags for driver and passengers from front and side are fixed which inflate in microseconds after collision takes place to save the passengers and drivers.

b. Seat belt with retrencher (automatic seat belt).

c. Collapsible steering, which reduces its height at the time of accidents.

Question: What are the checks to ensure compliance with safety measures?

Answer: Motor vehicle components and the complete vehicle undergo various safety checks by test agencies approved by the Government of India. These agencies test the components, through simulation, and conduct severe endurance test for deformation torsion, elongation, weather effects, etc. Completely built vehicles are run, using electronic controls, at the speed of 48 to 53 kms per hour and banged against concrete wall. There are dummies used in the vehicles. Sensors measure severity of the impact on the body parts of these dummies.

 
Vehicle safety regulations are being changed and made more stringent from time to time to make the vehicles increasingly safe in terms of their active and passive safety.

 
Simultaneously, testing facilities are being augmented to keep pace with the changing safety regulations in India and in tune with the developments worldwide. For example, while front crash testing has been started, work on creating infrastructure for testing the severity of collision sidewise and head-on collision is in progress.