ESP a must, but poor road design - not speed - kills

The man who heads-up Mercedes-Benz's safety development has singled out road infrastructure as the greatest factor in reducing the road toll.

Speaking to the Carsales Network at last week's North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit, Mercedes-Benz's safety development chief, company Vice President, Ulrich Mellinghoff said that better road design, including the wider use of grade separation (ie: dual carriageways) has the greatest role to play in reducing the road toll. Indeed, according to Mellinghoff, properly designed road infrastructure has more potential to significantly reduce the road toll than local authorities' fixation with speed.

According to Mellinghoff, while systems like ESP can affect 30 per cent of injurious accidents, improved road design could cut out half of them in real terms.

"If you look at the statistics from Germany you see that around about 20 per cent of the accidents were because the speed is too high, or is not the right speed for that situation -- sometimes 20km/h is too high. So there is not a really good possibility to see what really happens in that accident," Mellinghoff opined.

"But what we have seen is that if you have perfectly developed roads, the risk of accident is tremendously reduced. For example in Germany where you have divided roads, there are only about 600 fatalities per year, while on our normal highways where you have crossing traffic, you have about 3500 killed per year. On [those divided] highways we have three or four times as much traffic as the other roads -- there is [therefore] only this much smaller risk of an accident," Mellinghoff explained.

"This shows how important it is to separate the traffic -- people with cars, from people on bicycles or pedestrians... How important it is to have perfect road conditions... With the right infrastructure you not only reduce the risk of accident, you avoid it completely," the safety chief stated.

According to Mellinghoff, Mercedes' own statistics do not indicate faster drivers are more likely to be involved in accidents. Indeed, the opposite could be the case.

"We look at accidents where Mercedes cars were involved and look at the reason for the accident and what happened to the people as well as which systems caused to reduce the accident. We have seen that people who drive rather fast are much more concentrated on driving, so their risk to have an accident is not higher than those who drive only 100km/h or so," Mellinghoff explained.

"Germany is a country with rather low accident rate. It is not higher than in other countries like Italy or Spain or France. And it's only a little bit higher than in Great Britain," Mellinghoff offered when questioned on the need for Germany to impose speed limits.

The safety chief also poured water on Australian authorities' contention that advanced driver training predisposed drivers to risk taking and therefore higher accident rates.

"We have been doing driver schools for, I think, 30 years and what we have [found] is that almost 80 per cent of [untrained] people -- as an example -- are not able to make an emergency brake, together with trying to steer around a critical situation.

"I'm absolutely convinced that a [advanced] driver school helps to reduce the accident rate. That's what we have learned in all the years we have done these schools."

Mellinghoff explained Mercedes' brake assist systems were developed after observing the conduct of untrained drivers.

"The brake assist system was developed just out of that reason... That we have seen that the people realised that there is a dangerous situation and they braked, but they didn't put the pedal to the max, so they only use 60 or 70 per cent of the maximum brake force. Now [they] have brake assist which when it 'realises' that this is an emergency brake and then by itself applies maximum brake force."

In addition to continuing a focus on advanced safety systems, Mellinghoff reaffirmed Mercedes-Benz's position that stability control should be compulsory of all new vehicles.

"[Compulsory] ESP has to become part of all cars worldwide. At the moment only 20 per cent of all cars which are sold have an ESP system. We know that about 30 per cent of severe accidents can be reduced if they have ESP."

Mellinghoff opined ESP's key contribution was not only its ability to avoid accidents, but also its role in reducing the severity of accidents.

"We really know that ESP reduces severely all accidents. If you have no ESP, and you get your car out of control, you very often touch a tree or something from the side. What we have seen when you have ESP almost 80 per cent of accidents which have an impact you will touch with your front. There you have crumple zones and a safety cell and enough space to reduce the force," he said.

Mellinghoff said ESP added no more than $US200 to the cost of a car. Indeed, with regard to that cost, Mellinghoff opined governments could easily offset stability control's financial burden on buyers of cheaper cars, for instance, via reduced compulsory third party rates for ESP-equipped vehicles.

"I think if you look at the situation that ESP reduces accidents, then the total cost of driving must be reduced if all cars have ESP. So for the customer it should be positive to have ESP and maybe can pay less for their insurance."

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