Motor Transport & Travel / Euro NCAP Results

Euro NCAP and EuroRAP believe that road signs and markings represent a critical leap in road safety. They have joined forces to call on the motor industry and the highways sector to work together to ensure that technologies now available in the showroom fulfil their potential of saving thousands of lives. They feel that the condition of road signs and markings could be the greatest hurdle in reaping the benefits of new in-car safety technology, and the CAI would certainly agree with them.

According to the report Roads that Cars can Read, technologies now arriving in new car showrooms are forecast to save thousands of European lives as they trickle down into universal use. Increasingly cameras and sensors are used to read the road ahead and help the vehicle react early if a driver is heading into danger. However, obscured signs or faded road markings can be hard to read regardless of whether using the naked eye or an in-car camera. The new report includes a survey of six countries to probe how signing and marking practice still varies around Europe after more than half a century of international conventions.

Roads that Cars can Read recommends that the roads and motor industries should learn to work on new designs together by focusing on helping drivers with two early technologies now offered in new cars, ‘Lane Support’ and ‘Speed Alert’. Lane Support reads lane markings to work out the position of the vehicle within the lane and steers drifting vehicles back on path. Veering outside lanes is a common origin of many crashes. ‘Speed Alert’ allows drivers to choose warnings when exceeding posted roadside speed limits which remind them when they need to slow down.