Heavy Duty Trucking, April 2019

HDT APRIL 2019 8 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM y 16 year old totaled my car last month No injuries thank goodness but that and a few recent headlines got me thinking about safety technology I had to wonder would this crash have been avoided or at least mitigated by forward collision warning and or automatic emergency braking It was the result of a moment of inattention spending just a little too long looking for an unfamiliar HVAC control Perhaps instead of adhering to the conventional wisdom of teens driving an older car so the damage is less costly when they wreck it I should be buying my kid a new car with the latest safety technology But safety technology isnt always everything its cracked up to be because no matter how sophisticated it is you still have to consider how its going to interact with the human behind the wheel That factor was evident in some recent headlines One was a Delray Beach Florida crash of a Tesla Model 3 which underrode the side of a tractor trailer making a left turn onto a divided highway tearing off the Teslas roof as it passed under the trailer killing the driver So far reports have not indicated whether the Autopilot or automatic emergency braking systems were working at the time but the crash was eerily like one that happened in May 2016 near Gainesville Florida where a Tesla on Autopilot failed to see a white semitrailer turning in front of it and ran under the trailer killing the driver Teslas Autopilot is not fully autonomous technology as the name might make some people think Its an advanced driver assistance system with instructions for drivers to keep their hands on the wheel monitor their surroundings and be ready to take over at a moments notice If you were going to have this type of technology in a fleet vehicle youd want to be darn sure you had training and policies in place to make sure drivers were using it correctly And speaking of training and safety technology based on one newspaper investigation it looks like that may have been at issue with the recent highly publicized fatal crashes of the Boeing 737 Max The U S and other countries grounded the planes following two fatal crashes in just six months The Dallas Morning News found that pilots of the Boeing 737 Max 8 voiced safety concerns to federal authorities with one captain calling the flight manual inadequate and almost criminally insufficient months before the first crash last October The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System was included on the Max 8 as a safety mechanism that would automatically correct for a plane entering a stall pattern The Dallas Morning News explained If the plane loses lift under its wings during takeoff and the nose begins to point far upward the system kicks in and automatically pushes the nose down We dont know yet what caused those crashes But you can imagine that if a pilot wasnt expecting that if he or she didnt have the right training on how the system would behave in that situation their reaction could make the problem worse instead of better The pilots seemed kind of taken aback by the system taking over The Dallas Morning News reporter Cary Aspinwall said on the NPR program All Things Considered They werent sure what it was doing And I think that shocked the pilots So whether the Tesla Autopilot or the Boing Max 8 s latest automated safety tech in both cases it looks like the operators needed more training on how a system is supposed to work Are your drivers fully up to speed on all the latest safety technology youve put in their trucks When humans and safety technology collide Deborah Lockridge Editor in Chief dlockridge@ truckinginfo com @ Deb_ Lockridge With 29 years covering the trucking industry Deborah Lockridge is known for her award winning in depth features on diverse issues She can be reached at 205 989 6467 or dlockridge@ truckinginfo com EDITORIAL No matter how sophisticated the technology you still have to consider how its going to interact with the human behind the wheel M