A small, four-year-old company in Houston, Texas, has been using a Tesla Model 3 to show its revolutionary hazard warning system. Now, their system shall be in thousands and thousands of Teslas.
Emergency Safety Solutions, Inc. (ESS), is the creator of HELP, which stands for Hazard Enhanced Location Protocol. The corporate claims its system significantly improves driver safety. Tesla, which often develops its systems, and infrequently uses external programs, shall be the primary automaker to implement HELP in its vehicles.
ESS says that each seven minutes, there’s a crash involving a disabled vehicle on American roadways. These crashes kill or injure 15,000 people annually. The corporate also states the fundamental consider those crashes is an ineffective hazard light system that just isn’t getting the eye of drivers. The hazard light system was created greater than 70 years ago and hasn’t been improved since.
Based on ESS, HELP will: “provide advanced lighting alerts and digital location-based alerts to greatly improve advance warning communications to drivers.” Virginia Tech Transportation Institute studied several lighting combos and located that 4hz to 6Hz flash frequencies greatly improved drivers’ attention. The present system is 1.5Hz.
Researchers then took the 5Hz system to the road and located that drivers responded 12 seconds earlier. Additionally they discovered that drivers moved over 360 meters or nearly 4 football fields away from the disabled automobile. As well as, drivers moving to the left of a disabled automobile jumped from 30 percent with the present system to 87 percent with HELP.
The flashing lights will undoubtedly improve safety, however the system also sends a digital signal to alert drivers using in-car or phone navigation that there’s a hazard ahead. The early warning will allow drivers to be warned much ahead of just the visual blinking lights system. Moreover, the HELP system could be manually activated or it can robotically activate if a collision is detected or an airbag is deployed.
Tom Metzger, CEO of ESS, said, “Tesla is a pacesetter in bringing first-time innovation to passenger vehicles and is leading the best way by implementing HELP technology on potentially thousands and thousands of Tesla vehicles worldwide. It is a monumental step in the trouble to beat the troubling safety issue of crashes into disabled and vulnerable vehicles, which tragically injure or kill tens of 1000’s all over the world annually.”
Recent Hazard Light Pattern on a Model 3
Tesla will implement these changes to those existing vehicles through a software update. It is a rare step for Tesla, which often creates its own systems and improves traditional programs (Tesla recently improved the seatbelt).
This time Tesla found an organization that has done every thing needed to enhance this aspect of auto safety, so why recreate the wheel?