Volvo to wake up drivers

By John Porretto
Associated Press

Jeff Greenberg, a Ford Motor Co. technician, yesterday described a plan to add devices that will keep drowsy drivers alert in Volvo cars and SUVs. Ford owns Volvo. Associated Press

Volvo and its owner, Ford Motor Co., released results of a study on the problem yesterday at the New York Auto Show and announced plans for the technology to be included in Volvo cars and SUVs before the end of the decade.

Because the features are still several years from being offered in cars for sale, Ford offered few details. Ford spokesman Mike Vaughn said the automaker tested computerized optical scanning and a variety of warnings: a vibrating steering wheel, the sound of a car driving over rumble strips and a visual warning projected on the windshield.

Researchers also tested a so-called "active" system in which the vehicle would actually adjust the steering automatically if it veered too far one way or the other.

"We've been able to demonstrate that we have the ability to alert a drowsy driver to a lane departure and improve their performance," said Jeff Greenberg, a technical specialist in Ford's research and advanced engineering department.

"We're confident we can do it in ways that drivers will accept," Greenberg said. "The new system will be adaptive and intelligent."

The safety enhancements also could be used on other Ford brands after Volvo's startup, the company said.

Luxury car maker Infiniti said last month that it will begin offering lane-departure warning systems in vehicles later this year, the first use of such accident-avoidance technology in North American passenger cars.

Employing a small camera, speed sensor and warning buzzer, the system is designed to alert drivers of unintentional movement out of a designated traffic lane. It will be offered this fall on 2005 models of Infiniti's FX sport utility vehicle, then again next spring on the 2006 M45 luxury sedan.

Ford and others have experimented with devices and high-tech systems to help stifle drowsy driving for at least two decades. But Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research in Bandon, Ore., said he's not aware of any car makers offering an instrument specifically designed to alert drivers when they're dozing at the wheel.

Spinella said automakers have studied systems that use cameras to scan drivers' eyes or sense when they're loosening their grip on the steering wheel beyond normal.

The challenge, he said, has been developing a marketable device without hitches.

"The issue is liability," Spinella said. "It has to be literally 100 percent fool proof before an automaker will use it."

Ford spent five months studying the problem of drowsy driving, which accounts for about 4 percent of all fatal crashes in the United States, or roughly 1,500 deaths each year.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration says that 55 percent of fatal accidents occur when vehicles veer from their lanes unintentionally, the result of inattention, drowsiness and other factors.

The National Sleep Foundation says a 2002 poll indicated that about one-half of adult drivers — 51 percent of about 100 million people — said they'd driven a vehicle while feeling drowsy.

Ford and Volvo tested 32 people between November and March on a "full motion simulator" at a research lab. All agreed to stay up all night before the test and take no caffeine after 6 p.m.

The next day, participants drove for three hours on a simulated darkened road. They used a variety of methods to stay awake, including singing, slapping their faces and drinking water. Three eventually drove off the road and "crashed."