Rollover crashes are one of the most significant safety problems for large trucks and virtually all classes of light trucks, including pickups, sport utility vehicles and vans. Rollover crashes among all vehicles result in an average of more than 9,000 fatalities per year and over 200,000 non-fatal injuries. Large trucks, which account for 3 percent of all registered vehicles, accounted for 9 percent of traffic fatalities in 1997. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is leading a public-private consortium to develop the Truck Rollover Warning System, estimates that nearly 4,000 of 15,000 large truck rollovers occurring each year could be prevented with advance warning.

The three-day NTSB hearing, taking place August 31 through September 1, is part of the NTSB's continuing truck and bus safety initiative and will feature innovative new technologies for commercial vehicles that will make the nation's highways safer.

Testing for the prototype Truck Rollover Warning System will begin in September on a fleet of U.S. Xpress trucks operating in Tennessee, where roadside transmitters positioned at high-risk curves along Interstate 75 will interact with the onboard system to alert truckers to heightened risk. The roadside beacon technology is similar to electronic clearance being used in toll collection systems.

"Raytheon is proud to contribute a technology that will enhance the safety of thousands of passengers and goods on our highways. By demonstrating that this system can be used to prevent rollovers of heavy rigs, we believe that the technology can then be adapted for buses, lighter passenger trucks and sport utility vehicles," said Brian D. Morrison, director of Raytheon Control-By-Light.

The prototype system includes a trailer instrumentation system and a dashboard mounted computer/display system. At the heart of the trailer instrumentation system is a Raytheon Control-By-Light distributed sensing module that gathers information from acceleration, suspension air pressure, and torque sensors  mounted on the trailer axle assembly. This information, collected in real time, is forwarded via Raytheon Control-By-Light's fiber optic network to a dashboard mounted computer/display system.

The dashboard mounted computer/display system, also provided by Raytheon, computes rollover risk based on the trailer state and other information such as vehicle speed. If rollover risk is high, a visual and/or audible alarm is issued to alert the driver to slow down or take other corrective action. The dashboard mounted computer/display system features a Pentium class computer, touch/flat panel display and interface to Raytheon Control-By-Light's fiber optic network.

Raytheon Control-By-Light is part of a consortium including the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Federal Highway Administration, the Tennessee Department of Transportation, the Texas Transportation Institute, the University of Tennessee Transportation Center, U.S. Xpress Enterprises, Volvo Trucks and Wabash National Corporation. Major suppliers and subcontractors include the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, Eaton-VORAD, and QualCOMM.

Beta testing for the new Truck Rollover Warning System will occur in U.S. Xpress trucks on a route between Florida and Ohio on I-75. During initial testing, the trucks will gather curve data to determine normal acceleration and strains as well as typical swerving and braking patterns, and all information will be used to build a database. Onboard Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, also provided by Raytheon, will provide precise position information while the truck is on the road.

Raytheon Control-By-Light, based in Sudbury, Mass., is part of the Commercial Electronics division of Raytheon Company. Raytheon Control-By-Light  technologies provide highly reliable, cost-effective fiber optic-based sensing and automated control solutions for a wide range of applications, including transportation vehicle controls and building automation. Additional  information about Raytheon Control-By-Light can be found on its Web site at http://www.control-by-light.com/.

SOURCE: Raytheon Control-By-Light

CO: Raytheon Control-By-Light; National Transportation Safety Board; Raytheon Company