Updated Tuesday, Sept. 5: Despite calls for an extended comment period from the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance and others, the deadline to comment on the joint proposal seeking feedback on a proposal to mandate automatic emergency braking systems on heavy-duty trucks from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is tonight, Tuesday, Sept. 5, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. Comments to NHTSA can be made here, while comments to FMCSA can be made here.
CVSA, which is filing its comments Tuesday on behalf of the Commercial Vehicle Brake Manufacturers Council (CVBMC), said that while it supports the intent of the proposal, it found “a number of challenges with the proposed implementation, testing procedures and timeline that should be addressed prior to the agencies publishing their final rules.”
One primary issue, CVSA said, is that the proposal and its testing procedures were written to reflect AEB as a crash prevention technology rather than a crash mitigation technology. The group noted, however, that AEB developers designed AEB to alert drivers to a potential crash and to help the driver respond, if necessary; not to actually prevent crashes. “Many of the testing procedures and performance standards appear to be crafted for AEB as a prevention tool, rather than a mitigation tool, and this disconnect must be addressed.“
The group also noted challenges in Class 3-6 trucks, as electronic stability control systems and AEB are not readily available in the medium-duty truck space, which will require more time to deploy and implement the technology than the proposal outlines.
“The final AEB rule must consider the many differences in vehicle types, vocation, performance, application, readiness to incorporate ESC and AEB by type and class, along with the costs and time needed to conduct development, testing and certification of these vehicle systems,” the group said. It added that the CVBMC would file additional comments to outline and propose alternate performance and test requirements.
Original story follows:
As more automated-driving capabilities have steadily been featured on newer trucks, owners have for many years shared various instances of so-called “false positive” events -- where collision-detection/warning systems key in on objects ahead that no human driver would see as an insurmountable problem. While there's certainly a learning curve when it comes to operating with such systems in place, the result of various "false positive" events, a sudden application of the brakes, has unnerved many.
