Braking fast

A new predictive emergency braking system to be rolled out by Bosch this year could help significantly improve road safety throughout the Middle East.

The new system has the potential to avert three out of four injury-causing rear-end collisions.

Middle Eastern countries are intensifying their road safety programmes in response to the World Health Organisation's warning that road-related crashes will become the number one cause of death by 2020 unless positive actions are taken.

They are particularly focusing on the four hazard control measures of elimination, engineering, education and enforcement. Bosch will support the engineering dimension by introducing a predictive emergency braking system that will provide drivers with support on three levels.

Robert Bosch Middle East general manager Volker Bischoff said: "More intelligence is being built into braking systems to enable them to assess traffic conditions and provide additional braking support as needed.

"Rather than being sold off as separate equipment, such systems are already being built into entire automobile lines. We will be installing predictive systems into Audi vehicles. With governments such as the UAE spending heavily on road safety, the introduction of our new system represents a significant step towards better regional prevention of road accidents."

The upcoming Bosch system detects potential obstacles and initially provides an audible or visual warning, followed by a brief application of the brakes.

If the driver reacts and steps on the brakes, the system uses the emergency braking assistant to increase braking pressure and avoid collision.

However, if there is no driver response but impact is imminent, then the system brakes at maximum force.

Bosch engineers have been able to reduce the weight and size of the new braking control system by up to 30 per cent as compared to the previous version.

A further reduction in cost supports the efforts of the automotive industry and authorities to make active safety systems standard equipment worldwide. The new Bosch system will go into series production this year at Audi.

According to European studies, as many as 1,100 fatal accidents involving pedestrians can be prevented each year if all cars are equipped with braking assistance systems.

These systems have become mandatory for all new car and light commercial vehicle types in the EU since November and will be required in new vehicles from February 24 as part of new EU regulation aimed at improving pedestrian safety.

Bosch analyses of the German In-Depth Accident Study show that in rear-end collisions leading to injury, a third of German drivers did not apply the brakes before collision while half did not use full braking capacity.

A predictive emergency braking system could have prevented three out of four of these crashes.

Bosch currently invests around 45 per cent of its research and development budget in technologies that help protect the environment and conserve resources, and generates a strong third of its sales with such products.