Dept for Transport - vunerable road users

Conal

Pedelecer
Sep 28, 2007
228
2
Consultation on the proposal for a Regulation on the protection of vulnerable road users

Department for Transport - Consultation on the proposal for a Regulation on the protection of vulnerable road users

This is a link to the Department of Transport guidance for this consultation process. What caught my attention is that there is no mention of bikes, electric or otherwise, or of cycles, bicycles, or cyclists in any of the lengthy documents.

It now seems that we are to be known as "vunerable road users". I won't argue with this! The measure seem to be addresing manufactor's need for clarity as to how they can gain "flat front" vehicle exemption from the passive safety element of the requirements and the need for automatic braking sensors.

To quote the proposal

"The proposal seeks to replace some existing measures aimed at reducing the consequences of a vehicle/pedestrian impact (passive safety) with measures that are intended to reduce the frequency of this type of accident (active safety). The Commission proposes the use of an enhanced braking function (Emergency Brake Assist) to deliver this benefit and predicts a very significant benefit from this approach. However, an analysis of UK accidents involving traffic employing this technology has failed to identify a statistically significant effect.

This "collision avoidance system" sound like something out of science fiction although a recent article about the new top end Volvo featured automatic braking by the use of front sensors

I would be interested in the views of the forum and specifically if this technology can "see" bikes.

Conal
 

flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
53,152
30,567
I can't speak of front sensors specifically, but my new car has four reversing sensors spread evenly across the back.

They "see" at a very wide angle, and when reversing out of my garage, the sensor beeping doesn't stop until the rear of the car is almost level with the doorpost. I'd say any blindspot between the sensor is hard up against the bumper, the "seeing" cones overlapping by 30 cm from the bumper at most.

If the front ones are like that, they should see a bicycle at anything beyond a foot in front, though the sensitivity to a narrow profile target at a much greater distance could be poor.

Could be that we end up with our equivalent of the yachtsman's radar reflector. :)
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