Wabco Boosts Truck Safety Tech

Wabco Holdings introduced its Active Lateral Safety solution, which adds two driver assistance systems to its existing steering technology that can be paired with SmartDrive's video event recorder. Wabco has also updated its OnGuard collision mitigation system.

Wabco's new solution will be available later this year, the company announced at the American Trucking Associations' Technology & Maintenance Council annual meeting in Atlanta.

"By combining these technologies into an integrated safety package, we have extended the benefits of active steering to two of the most common critical events leading to accidents — drifting out of the desired travel lane and failing to detect a vehicle in the driver's blind spot," said Jon Morrison, Wabco's president of the Americas. "We are pioneering the creation of Active Lateral Safety as we did with forward safety when we introduced our OnGuard system. Together, these solutions enhance vehicle intelligence and protection to support the overall success and safety of on-highway fleets."

Wabco's Active Lateral Safety suite includes an active steering system that features a Sheppard hydraulic steering gear equipped with a magnetic torque overlay; OnLaneAssist active lane keeping system; and OnSideAssist blind spot assist system. Fleet purchasers can pair the SmartDrive event recorder video management platform with Wabco's OnLane camera to the OnLaneAssist package.

OnSide Assist provides 160 degrees of lateral radar coverage and a rearward reach of up to 33 feet to help drivers avoid collisions during overtaking and lane-changing maneuvers. The technology can detect another vehicle in an adjacent lane, and provide steering wheel resistance to alert the driver during the lane change.

The new video safety service combines SmartDrive's SR4 video telematics platform and event recorder with Wabco's OnLaneAlert lane departure warning system available on OnLane camera hardware.

As part of the service, fleet managers will be able to record safety-related events, including colisions, using triggers for lane departure warning, forward collision warning, short following, roll stability, fishtailing, and ABS events.

The new SmartDrive system is available for new trucks using OnLaneAlert and as a retrofit option for other trucks in the fleet.

In related news, Wabco has updated its OnGuardActive collision mitigation system, which can now bring the vehicle to a complete stop at speeds of up to 37 mph with active braking. The system, which can detect objects up to 650 feet ahead, uses improved object detection with enhanced filtering capabilities of the far- and near-range dual-beam radar.

Fleets who used the system reported an 87% reduction in rear-end collisions in 2014, according to Wabco.