Fatality-free roads a "realistic" target

Civil engineering projects to separate different types of road users would play the major part in reducing the road toll to zero, says the man who oversees safety at Mercedes-Benz.

That man is Ullrich Mellinghoff, Vice President of Development Safety, NVH and Testing for Mercedes-Benz Cars. He spoke with the Carsales Network during the Frankfurt motor show last week and countered our view that natural or even unnatural attrition within the country's vehicle parc would elevate safety on the roads.

With Germany's own vehicle scrappage scheme in place, it seemed likely that a major reduction in road trauma could result from the national vehicle parc being progressively modernised -- sooner rather than later.

One would think that a larger percentage of road-registered cars equipped with modern safety features such as airbags and stability control would be the major contributing element in a significant reduction of lives lost on the road.

Not necessarily so, it seems. Mellinghoff believes that state and local governments can do their bit to reduce the loss of life, through keeping the various road users apart.

"I think the principal factor is that you have very mixed traffic; you have cars, you have trucks, you have pedestrians, you have bicycle riders -- and there are a lot of [uncalculated] situations..." he said.

"You can't be sure that all possible situations can be tackled [so] that you have no accidents.

"If you divide the different traffic partners in different areas... a pedestrian can never come close to a car -- and all these different things -- then maybe you have a chance in future for another significant reduction [in] accidents."

That's not to suggest that the car companies have all they can and may now walk away from the road safety issue. While cars remain under the control of fallible drivers, there'll still be errors of judgement and no number of intelligent safety systems will be able to compensate for every contingency.

"Assistance systems cannot overrun the physics," explains Mellinghoff.

"If you are too fast in a special situation, an accident can also occur [when] you have a lot of assistance systems. That's another reason why I will not believe [in an entirely accident-free future].

But the safety expert does feel that the margin for error can be improved to the point where people do not die in car crashes any more.

"If you [crash] at 200km/h against a tree, a Mercedes can't help you from dying, but those kinds of accidents happen very seldom.

"[For] 18 or 19 months, we haven't had any accident with a passenger killed in the area where we do accident research... the area around Stuttgart.

"I think fatality-free driving sounds much more realistic than accident-free driving...",

Mercedes-Benz celebrates its 40th anniversary of road safety research this year and Mellinghoff can illustrate the progress made since those early days.

"We started accident research when we had about 16,000 people killed in traffic... in one year," he said.

"Then it [climbed] close to more than 22,000 people killed in accidents, in Germany each year. In the year 2008, we had 4800 -- round about -- and we are very hopeful that in 2009, maybe we'll have less than 4000 people killed in Germany.

"Germany in the 1970s was divided in two parts, and in the meantime we are [now] the one country with much more people, with five times more traffic and eight times more cars."

The German experience is not unlike that of Australia, particularly in Victoria, where an annual road toll of over 1000 fatalities during the 1970s, has been reduced to around one third that number. Australia and Germany approach road safety with two very different philosophies however. Obtaining a licence in Germany is time-consuming, difficult and expensive -- but the licensed driver is free to travel at speeds that would be considered criminal in Australia. On the country's autobahns, there's a speed differential of up to 100km/h or more at times. Yet these roads remain the country's safest.

"The risk of fatalities on country roads is six times higher [than on autobahns] and in cities is eight times higher," says Mellinghoff.

"The reason is very simple. On our autobahns, all cars drive in one direction -- normally. There is no pedestrian and no bike [traffic] on autobahns."

Read the latest Carsales Network news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at www.carsales.mobi