August 16, 2011
Recently, National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman traveled to Detroit, Michigan to see and learn about a new generation of technology being developed to make driving safer. Accompanying the Chairman were Office of Highway Safety Director Donald Karol; Deputy Director of Highway Safety, Barbara Czech; Highway investigator, Tom Barth; Chief of the Safety Recommendations and Quality Assurance Division, Paula Sind-Prunier; Safety Recommendations Specialist, Julie Perot; Special Assistan to the Chairma Cresence Stafford; and Public Affairs Officer, Keith Holloway.
“The NTSB has investigated too many highway accidents where technologies, if standard on all vehicles including large trucks, could possibly have prevented or mitigated the accidents,” said Hersman. While in Michigan, Hersman wrote in her blog “New automotive technologies are designed to assist the driver, rather than replace the driver. If they are widely deployed across the fleet, they have the potential to drive down the number of fatalities on our highways by bridging the gap between the human, the environment, and the machine.”
During the three-day trip, the group visited Bosch and Meritor WABCO, two manufacturers of safety technologies. They were briefed on innovative technologies for automobiles including adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking, predictive collision warning systems, blind spot detection, and electronic stability control. The group also observed some of the new technology that is being tested and developed for commercial vehicles.
Public Affairs Officer Keith Holloway said, “One of the highlights of the trip was the tours of the proving grounds, for the “Big Three” automakers (Chrysler, Ford and GM). We got to see first-hand how these technologies are actually being implemented in automobiles.”
While in Detroit, Chairman Hersman also met with reporters from Forbes and Motor Trend magazines, and CBS radio and she met with the editorial boards of the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press.