The road ahead

How am I driving?

It’s a question you’ll often see on the back of a commercial vehicle, with a free∞phone number inviting other motorists to provide feedback.

Soon that phone call might not be necessary – an onboard computer will be monitoring the driver’s performance, and teaching the vehicle itself when to issue warning alerts.

Driver assistance technology has been around for a while, but a project developed by scientists from six European countries claims to move the field on significantly.

Rather than giving the driver information about how well he or she is doing, their computer system, called Drivsco, sends its information straight to the vehicle.

By monitoring how the driver performs in normal conditions – such as when going round bends or stopping for pedestrians – the computer models their normal behaviour.

Then if the same person is driving at night, for example, and deviates from the normal pattern, perhaps by taking an unusual line around a bend, the computer concludes that this is due to a lack of visibility and warns the driver that he or she is behaving unusually, or that there could be hazards ahead.
With some 42 percent of fatal traffic accidents occurring at night, the potential for this kind of technology to make the roads safer is clear.

Much of the technology used in the system has been developed by the Department of Computer Architecture and Technology of the University of Granada.

This includes an artificial vision system that receives input pictures and produces a first “interpretation of the scenario” in terms of depth, local movement, and image lines – all on one electronic chip.

The idea is that the system can be assembled in different types of vehicle in future.

The first tests have been promising and have proved the usefulness of the Drivsco concept, said professor Eduardo Ros Vidal, who leads the team at Granada.

“We do not intend to develop automatic driving systems, as it would be very difficult for insurance agencies and car companies to come to an agreement in the event of a crash,”

Advanced driving assistance systems could have clear safety benefits.

But will long-haul truckers listen to what the computer tells them? That remains to be seen.