AVON, Ohio – Across North America, at every hour and over every mile of road, commercial vehicle drivers keep things moving with a focus on safety. In support of the goals of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s (CVSA) Operation Safe Driver Week, Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems LLC salutes everyone behind the wheel and strives to provide them with the equipment and information that help put them in the position to perform at their best.
On the calendar this year for July 9-15, Operation Safe Driver Week is a safe-driving awareness and outreach initiative aimed at improving the driving behaviors of passenger vehicle drivers and commercial motor vehicle drivers.
CVSA works with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) during the week to promote traffic law and safety belt enforcement, operating safely around commercial vehicles, roadside inspections, regulatory compliance, and commercial driver education.
“Nothing you can put on a truck today – no component, no software, no technology – will be as important to that vehicle’s safe operation as having a skilled and alert professional driver in control of it,” said Fred Andersky, Bendix director of Government and Industry Affairs. “And that’s why we continuously aim to develop systems and tools to help North America’s millions of drivers do their jobs even more safely and effectively, contributing to safer roads for everyone.”
Helping Drivers Stay at Their Best
Even the best driver on the road can use an assist from time to time. Bendix, the North American leader in the development and manufacture of active safety and braking technologies for commercial vehicles, delivers systems that can help drivers recognize a potential collision and take action to help them mitigate a crash or potentially lessen its severity.
“The FMCSA’s Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts data is a regular reminder of what’s at stake,” Andersky said. “The most recent report showed that there were 327,000 trucks involved in property-damage-only crashes in 2020; 107,000 trucks involved in injury crashes; and 4,842 involved in fatal crashes.”
Bendix® Wingman® Fusion™ – the company’s flagship advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) – integrates information from its forward-facing radar, video, and the Bendix® ESP® braking system, combining and cross-checking the data from sensors that work together and not just in parallel.
By creating a more detailed and more accurate picture from this information, Fusion delivers autonomous emergency braking and adaptive cruise control, along with following distance alerts, lane departure warnings, and alerts when speeding – all while prioritizing alerts to help reduce driver distraction.
Severe event-based data – including video – can be wirelessly transmitted and is accessible via SafetyDirect® by Bendix CVS for driver coaching and analysis by fleet safety personnel.
“These are absolutely not driver replacement systems,” emphasized TJ Thomas, Bendix director of marketing and customer solutions, Controls. “Also, in recent years, we’ve heard from several customer fleets about the significant reduction in rear-end collisions they’ve achieved when they pair Wingman Fusion with proper driver training programs. And in collisions that did occur, they’ve seen decreased severity.”
Other Wingman Fusion capabilities include multi-lane autonomous emergency braking, highway departure warning and braking, and advanced adaptive cruise control features to improve driver convenience. Fusion’s forward-facing camera also enables the system to read roadside speed limit signs and provide Overspeed Alert and Action. Speeding is a key area of enforcement focus during Operation Safe Driver Week.
Because it is built on the foundational technology of the Bendix® ESP® Electronic Stability Program full-stability system, Wingman Fusion can assist drivers in potentially mitigating conditions that could lead to rollover and loss of control.
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