Meritor WABCO announced Friday it will host a series of webinars beginning in May to help customers understand why they benefit from equipping new tractor-trailers with SmartTrac Stability Control before August when federal regulations mandating stability control begin to take effect.
By requiring electronic stability control systems such as SmartTrac on trucks and large buses, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates the new mandate will prevent up to 2,329 crashes, 60 fatalities and hundreds of injuries annually.
“Stability control has been an impressive success story in Europe and is acknowledged as a significant contributor to an 11 percent reduction in fatal crashes involving trucks since 2014,” says Matthew Stevenson, president and general manager, Meritor WABCO.
In the United States, Meritor WABCO says its SmartTrac Stability Control System has exceeded crash-reduction expectations among fleets and federal regulators for almost 15 years. Since 2003, U.S. fleets using SmartTrac Stability Control report rollover and loss of control accident reduction between 53 and 100 percent – far exceeding NHTSA estimates of 40-50 percent reduction.
Rollovers are the fourth most-frequent cause of fatal accidents involving large trucks but account for a disproportionate number of fatalities and injuries, and are the most costly, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. On average, 22 heavy-truck rollovers occur in the United States every day.
According to NHTSA, more than 8,000 fatal crashes and 84,000 injury crashes could have been prevented since 2003 if all medium- and heavy-duty fleets had a SmartTrac Stability Control type of system onboard. In total, 182,000 crashes could have been prevented, and with system effectiveness higher than predicted, even more crashes could have been prevented.
Available on trucks and trailers, Meritor WABCO says SmartTrac Stability Control integrates with sensors within anti-lock braking (ABS) and steering systems to predict impending slide or rollover. SmartTrac uses braking of individual wheels and reduced engine torque to assist the driver in maintaining control during critical driving situations such as spinouts, plowouts and untripped rollovers. An important feature integrated into SmartTrac is ESCsmart, which has “self-learning” capability and automatically adapts to changes in vehicle characteristics and wear, the company says.
