India has the second largest road network in the world with over three million km of roads of which 60% are paved. According to a study, one person dies every four minutes in road accidents in India, estimating the cost of such accidents at Rs. 3.8 lakh crores or 3 per cent of the GDP. It was also revealed that half of all the deaths on the country’s roads are among vulnerable road users-motorcyclists, pedestrians and cyclists.
India, as a signatory to the Brasilia Declaration, is committed to reducing the number of road accidents and fatalities by 50 per cent by 2020.
If we are to keep this commitment, use of technology, in any and every aspect of road safety is essential. We will have to take a system approach and encourage innovation in automotive components, vehicle safety, road engineering including leveraging vehicle data management, connectivity, driving apps and dark spot identifications, as these will play a major role in improving road safety on Indian roads.
Technology plays a big role in making our roads safer. Hella being in automotive lighting we understand that ‘light is life’, at least when one is in critical need of visibility and signaling on road. When braking distance matters like life and death, visibility takes the key role for drivers to take any action. Light plays a major role when it comes to safe driving. It is important to see and be seen in order to avoid road fatalities. Recognizing moving traffic and stationary objects while driving is a crucial first step while driving, whether to move ahead or stop or take a turn or overtake, etc. Any reaction while driving can be as accurate as it is to recognize the traffic. This is enabled by visibility and light signaling devices, both during the day and night.
A lot of consideration goes into the design and manufacturing of our lighting solutions. Road conditions and its associated environment is one of them. We offer several lighting & signaling products to achieve the traffic recognition. Indian road conditions are even more challenging due to our present road infrastructure and mixed road users from trucks to cars to tractors to bikes, cycle & pedestrian in all possible lanes.
Digital lighting or smart lighting can offer solution to some of the specific hazard situations, though it alone cannot solve all the road safety problems. One obvious problem while driving in dark hours is the glare from vehicular traffic on the opposite direction which can be fully eliminated using a camera assisted smart reflector or modular or digital matrix based front lighting which blanks out light from all possible places where the traffic is moving and protects the driver’s eyes. It also safeguards pedestrians & cyclists also in the same way. With the camera system we can process the moving objects around and accordingly adjust our headlamps digitally and achieve dynamic beams to view what lies much farther ahead and wider to enable safe breaking distance. We can have early detection of objects coming from the extreme right or left or from the corners and so on.
The latest generation headlamps are intelligent, high resolution and multi-functional that can be controlled individually via software, helping adapt the distribution of light in an optimum way for traffic, weather and road conditions. Adaptive high beam assistants automatically ensure that oncoming traffic or cars ahead are not dazzled, through camera monitoring and a precise dimming of individual light sources, while the rest of the vehicle’s surroundings remains fully illuminated. Dynamic light guidance, moreover, allows bends to be better illuminated and traffic signs to be lit glare-free. Its longer range shall benefit the drivers with improved visibility, resulting in increased safety.
But before we go to digital front lighting, to arrest road deaths in our country, we first need to work on basic necessities of signaling on our roads. It was found out from the accident statistics that around 37 per cent deaths involve trucks/CVs and close to 200,000 accidents happen during nights every year. Majority of these trucks/CVs have been found with grossly inadequate and inaccurate visibility (lighting & signaling) devices. It is obvious that most of the ‘Stop-Tail-Indicator’ signaling lamps don’t work at all. One major reason for this is inadequate technology in developing and manufacturing these safety critical products in India which fails them too often and too early.
Motivated to arrest road deaths caused by tail gating and as a result of cars and bikes having rear collision & side collision with trucks unable to spot them or estimate their speed due to absence of signaling equipment, Hella India Lighting has innovated an affordable localized signaling solution for trucks. It is a fit & forget, always ON and affordable full LED truck stop-tail lamp which gives four metres of additional braking distance to prevent accidents due to tail gating, and also saves 80 per cent of the energy, thereby reducing the total cost of operation for truck owners.
The Union Government too has taken steps in this regard and has made the installation of speed governors mandatory in all commercial vehicles. Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) ensures that vehicles do not cross the legal speed limits. By constantly monitoring the location of the vehicle through GPS, the system is able to calculate speeds based on the distance that is travelled and link it with a database that in turn links it with the speed limit for the road and area being travelled on. If it detects that a vehicle is about to cross the prescribed limit, it issues an audio and visual warning to the driver.
Emergency Brake Assist can also be an important tool. The timely application of brakes can often help mitigate a potential crisis on the road. However, the window for this is often just a few seconds. To assist in such situations, the emergency brake feature identifies when the brakes are being applied in panic and initiates a maximum brake faster than a human would be able to. It does this by assessing the force applied by a driver on the brake. The widespread use of this technology can reduce the normal stopping distance by 45 per cent.
In a nutshell, it can be said that more the use of technology, the better it is with regard to road safety. But, before we blindly start using every possible technology available around the world, we must find an Indian adaption to these. It would be even better to first clearly define the Indian problems and create our own local solutions which are affordable yet innovative. This will need massive accident research from across the country, which calls for high quality real time evidence and as in many countries we should encourage the use of camera systems on our vehicles to capture real-time footage of any accident or accident-like situation. These data can help identify the cause & effect relationship for all the variables which are mainly responsible for accidents. Once these are prioritized, technology innovations must be directed to solve the local root causes and be monitored closely to reduce the alarming number of deaths in our country.
True to its promise for making an impact in this area, Hella India Lighting has decided to launch these camera systems through its aftermarket channel for retrofitment on vehicles as they will assist in analysis with most relevant evidence. These camera systems will also help consumers in hassle-free claim settlement with their insurance providers.
We at Hella believe ‘Technology of Tomorrow for the life of Today’ can be a vision for the country, and not just for Hella India Lighting, as the task in hand needs all stakeholders to work together and build a safety ecosystem in the country. Technology innovations and ideas to solve the menace of road deaths cannot be confined within the boundary of one organization and hence only an open, innovative approach where every company brings its expertise and works as per prioritized root causes can help us fulfill our dream of building an India free from all avoidable road deaths.
By Ramashankar Pandey, Managing Director, Hella India Lighting