Safety first - Mercedes Benz

IN THE never, never land of Indian motoring, we have leading automobile magazines extol the virtues of horse power in curious ways - one, in an editorial, talked of``beating''amber lights that were about to turn red as a major advantage of a powerful car. Safety is obviously something that that they do not think their readers appreciate.

Mercedes Benz takes a different tack - not that it has ever shied away from making its automobiles ever more powerful or responsive. In its early days, its ``founding rivals", Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz, were famous for out doing each in the power of their offerings and this continued with the merged, in 1926, firm's racing programmes.

Active and passive safety

The three pointed star, however, has always valued safety and reliability at least as highly and, like Volvo, made them major attributes of its marque. This has been particularly true since Mercedes ``invented''the safety cage a half-century ago. This``cage''is a rigid compartment sandwiched between energy absorbing crumple zones, front and rear, to keep its occupants safe in a collision. The safety cage has been followed by``active safety''innovations like disc brakes, anti-lock braking systems (ABS), acceleration skid control and electronic stability programme (ESP), and``passive''devices like side impact beams, seat belts and air bags. Mercedes did not always invent these devices, but has been in the vanguard in their adoption. Another early adoption was the spring-loaded emblem to protect pedestrians in frontal collisions.

Mercedes Benz is now taking giant steps forward with its Pre- Crash and Pre-Safe programmes. The first, as the name implies, is an attempt to increase the safety of a car's occupants in an``inevitable''crash situation whereas the latter attempts to avoid collisions altogether.

Pre-Safe is considered a part of an active safety programme and includes the integration of systems such as radar assisted cruise control, ESP, brake assist, SBC (servotronic brake control) and ABC (active body control). It is expected that this will require the further development of these technologies and will only be commercially adopted several years in the future. For example, current radar controlled cruise control has a range of over about 150 metres and operates at 77 GHz (1 GHz equals thousand million cycles per second) whereas something suitable for fail-safe crash protection will need to operate at 24 GHz with a range of less than 30 metres if it is to operate in all weathers and not be subject to too many false alarms.

Pre Crash

Pre Crash is part of Mercedes' passive safety programme in the giant Mercedes Benz Technology Center at Sindelfingen, near Stuttgart, in Germany. The passive safety programme has about 350 professionals in it out of a total of 9,000 in Mercedes Research and Development. This safety programme has about 20``real life''accident investigators, about 170 involved in car preparation and about 60 in crash simulation.

Pre Crash takes advantage of technologies already available in many automobiles to save lives and minimise injuries. For example, the second it takes for a trained driver to move her, or his, foot from the accelerator to the brake pedal, a car travelling at 100 kilometres per hour will move 27.8 metres, is essentially``wasted''time. The sudden movement from one pedal to another, and the subsequent``panic''braking can easily be sensed and the occupants prepared for the emergency. The seat belts can be pre-tensioned (provided they are being worn, of course!) in a few milliseconds and a beginning made with straightening the passenger's seat and moving it back. These two actions alone can save many lives and are the essence of Pre Crash. In the longer term, it is likely that such technology might even reduce, if not eliminate, the need for air bags.

Why not move the driver's seat as well? Two good reasons: One, the driver is likely to be distracted by such movement and because he, or she, is more likely to be prepared for the collision and already in a``correct''position.

Although these technologies are already in prototype form, and were demonstrated in a mock-up at the Frankfurt International Motor Show last month, it will probably be a couple of years before Pre Crash will be commercially available in a top-of-the- line Mercedes offering. Other companies, most notably Audi, are also working on similar programmes, but it seems almost certain that Mercedes will be first to market.

C. Manmohan Reddy

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