“Hella products are synonymous to Safety and Quality. Visibility and Signalling is an integral part of Safety Eco System. It is essential that the safety cycle while driving on the Road, which starts with Recognition of the traffic and then Reaction which is followed by Injury avoidance in case of accident, must have high focus on eradicating the accident situation right from the 1st step which is Recognition or Visibility and Signalling safety. At Hella we have found that enough work hasn’t been done in this area. We at Hella India Lighting Ltd. gives focus on “To see” & “To be seen” safety parameters of our products,” asserts Mr. Ramashankar Pandey, Managing Director, Hella India Lighting Ltd. Gurgaon. His observations on the above subject follow.
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Mandatory and other safety requirements in products
The full function LED tail lamp for Trucks with five year warranty which gives extra 4 meters of breaking distance compared with the bulb version is one of the best example of providing safety on Indian Roads. Bringing safety on Indian Roads is central to our company vision in India and hence every product we design, develop and produce has central purpose of helping bring more safety on Indian Roads. “Technology of tomorrow for the life of Today on Indian Roads” as our strategy theme has guided us on this journey since 2011. Our products classified as safety critical parts in an automobile not only follow safety critical standards, its homologation and COP needs for India but goes beyond on other safety dimensions to make available the latest technology for the benefit of arresting alarming Road Deaths in our Country.
Safety apprehensions at higher road speeds
Arresting alarming level of Road Deaths has to be our National Priority, as loss of 400 Indians including 40 Children every day can’t be left unattended. When Millions of Indians travel on Road every day to support economic activity of this Nation, 400 Families suffer the trauma of losing their loved ones and complete loss of their economic support system, the country loses more than 3.8 Lakhs Crore worth of GDP and hence even from a cost benefit calculation perspective, saving people on Road has to be our first priority, while saving life is naturally a huge emotional issue close to our hearts. Increasing speed alone can’t be blamed as the cause of Road Accident, we must look into the complete Safety Eco System of our Highways. Road Engineering has to be looked into. For vehicular safety, our Vehicles are equipped to manage this speed, what will become more important on higher speeds is the need for improvement in Braking Distances and longer visibility in the front. Both of this will need even better and safer Front visibility lighting to light more meters ahead without glaring other road users and effective signalling to provide more braking distance, to react to any accident situation. We have standard and add-on products for improving both front lighting distances as well as improve better signalling through LED advantage and we are open to develop further our solutions for OEM’s as well as for retro-fitment needs of CV users.
Technology impact on safety in the times ahead
To be relevant to current real life problem of India, before we have connected cars on Road, our request to OEM’s and Road users is to solve the problem of poor connectivity of a simple safety solution on Road called the “Stop & Tail Lamp”, of any CV to its battery and let the Indian Highways get connected for Signalling while driving. We find this as a bigger Connectivity Challenge and it causes many tailgating accidents on Indian Roads.
Having mentioned this compelling real life problem on Indian Highways, Hella Globally is working along with many OEM and other partners to participate and remain in the leading position of these developments of autonomous driving to electric cars. In this regard, Hella is innovating Lighting Safety to its newer heights, take example of its New Headlamp with Liquid Crystal HD Technology which Enables Fully Adaptive Light Distribution in Real Time. Overall, the new LCD headlamp projects 30,000 pixels onto the road. This allows adjusting the light pattern in an intelligent and continuous manner to various driving situations in real time. The use of an LC display is a further step towards digitalizing lighting. This means, the adaptation of the light pattern will increasingly be determined by software. The driver will obtain the best possible view of the road. Individual segments with e.g., other traffic participants or strongly reflecting street signs can be omitted or dimmed in a targeted manner. Highly complex functions are also conceivable, like navigation arrows or lines showing the ideal lane can be projected onto the road. LCD technology enables functions that will also be relevant to autonomous driving.
The LC display is the headlamp’s key component. It is situated between the LED light source and the projection lens. The display generates a matrix with 100 x 300 pixels that can be individually controlled and dimmed. A camera installed in the vehicle as well as a sensor optically reading distances and speeds (light detection and ranging sensor LiDAR), will forward the ambient information to the headlamp control unit via a processor. This will then direct the individual display pixels up to 60 times per second. 25 high-power LED’s arranged in three rows will serve as light source. Each LED’s light intensity will be adjusted to the respective lighting situation.