News

Today, Simon Sternlund, PhD student at Vehicle Engineering and Autonomous Systems / Mechanics and Maritime Sciences at Chalmers University defended his doctoral thesis “Traffic Safety potential and effectiveness of lane keeping support” successfully and is now a SAFER doctor. Simon is also a member in SAFER’s management team, representing the Swedish transport administration. Congratulations Simon, we wish you all the best in your future career!

Some key results:

• LDW has a great potential for saving lives. The function has the potential to prevent two-thirds of all accidents that occur in the event of accidental file exchanges.
• Milled center lines can reduce accidents by 40% for vehicles with ESC and 29% for vehicles without ESC.
• ELK can prevent up to 49% of oncoming and single accidents, while AES has the potential to prevent 42% of all fatal accidents.

In the road transport system, crashes due to lane departure account for a large proportion of severe crashes that passenger car occupants are exposed to. Simon Sternlund’s PhD thesis is based on four papers providing knowledge of lane keeping support integrated in vehicles and road infrastructure.
Simon Sternlund has evaluated the safety benefits of vehicle and infrastructure interventions that help the driver stay in his/her lane. He discovered among other things that a lane departure warning vehicle system halves the number of head-on and single crashes with personal injury in conditions where the system operates, which is at speeds above 65 km/h and where the road is not covered with snow.

Centreline rumble strips in combination with electronic stability control also effectively reduces relevant drift-out-of-lane crashes and is particularly important on roads with no median barrier. Centreline rumble strips on the road is also particularly important while waiting for cars driven in traffic to be replaced with new cars that are equipped with support to stay in their lane.

“To create a safe road transport system that does not harm or kill people, it is important to understand the effect of various road safety measures. Through the right combinations of road safety measures, a safe road transport system can be achieved.” says Simon Sternlund.

He hopes that his project can contribute to accelerate the implementation rate of road safety measures.
“To meet the challenge at an early stage, to evaluate vehicle systems that prove to be effective with the help of real-world crash data, speed up the implementation rate and promote road safety. That will save lives” says Simon Sternlund.