There’s a phrase for one of the technologies keeping people safer behind the wheel - ‘Intelligent Speed Adaptation’ (ISA). And WSP happens to employ two of Aotearoa New Zealand’s foremost ISA experts – Fergus Tate and Bill Frith.
Between them, the Wellington-based pair have clocked up almost a century of experience in transport research. They were recently involved in a report for the NZ Transport Agency looking at how ISA can help with road safety.
The report’s main conclusion is that ISA has appreciable crash reduction benefits, and that the benefits outweigh the costs. In New Zealand, ISA has the potential to save 5,298 deaths and serious injuries over the next 40 years.
The report follows an earlier ISA report done for the transport agency in 2013 where ISA was fitted to people’s cars and their speed recorded as they drove a route around Wellington.
There are three types of ISA. The most common, known as advisory ISA, detects a speed limit and gives a visual dashboard warning if a driver gets too heavy on the pedal. Variable ISA works the same way but can be turned on and off. When switched on, it prevents a driver from breaking the speed limit. Intervening ISA, which has been trialed in some countries, can’t be switched off.
ISA may seem like a new thing, but it’s been around for decades. All Japanese cars imported into New Zealand in the early 1990s sounded a beeper if the driver topped 100km/h but most people “turned it off out of annoyance,” says Fergus.
Fergus first researched ISA systems and driver behaviour in the 1990s at Leeds University. In a novel experiment, the team equipped twenty Skoda Fabia hatchbacks with ISA and monitored driver behaviour over six months.
Fast forward to today and, in some places, advisory ISA is now required by law. To curb speeding and improve road safety, every new vehicle sold in Europe, for example, must have an advisory ISA system.
Bill says discussion about mandating advisory ISA for New Zealand vehicles is a moot point because the left-hand-drive countries we import from, notably Japan and the UK, already include ISA in their cars, trucks, and commercial vehicles.
With lots of new in-vehicle safety technologies now being introduced, he says the most fascinating part of WSP’s latest research report was looking at how ISA will naturally make its way into New Zealand’s vehicle fleet as cars enter and exit the market.
“A growing number of cars whizzing around our highways and byways already feature an advisory ISA system. And, over time, our fleet will benefit from more advanced ISA systems.”
Even better, adds Fergus, is that in-car electronic safety technology is improving all the time.
“Eighty percent of new vehicles in New Zealand now feature autobrake technology, 75 percent have lane-keeping technology, and 55 percent have blind spot monitoring. Automatic high beams are becoming more common, where a camera detects oncoming vehicles and will dip your lights.”
Automatic crash notification systems are among the latest developments in vehicle safety. Known as e-call, a vehicle will automatically alert emergency services in a serious smash.
Fergus and Bill predict that advanced ISA systems and safety technologies such as e-call, intervehicle communications, and anti-whip lash seats will be in almost all New Zealand vehicles in 20 years’ time. In a country that annually records thousands of serious road injuries and deaths, that can only be a good thing.
Download WSP’s ISA research report here on the NZ Transport Agency website.
