The VADA system is built upon Bendix Wingman Fusion active safety system, fully integrating it from the factory with no external monitors or displays. That level of integration means all of the system’s alerts appear in the main Driver Information Display within the instrument cluster.
VADA takes the Fusion system a step beyond current capabilities by incorporating a 42-degree angle camera with the 22-degree radar sensor. Current models rely solely on radar. The addition of the camera allows the system to better detect other vehicles and react accordingly, says Ash Makki, Volvo’s technology marketing manager.
“This is the foundation for the future,” Makki said. “This is how accident mitigation is going to be dealt with — two brains thinking together to make sound decisions. Collecting data from radar and camera improves the accuracy of the system and makes it more effective.”
The system constantly reads the road ahead, using the camera system to identify other vehicles and the radar system to track their movement. Should the system detect an impending rear-end crash, such as when stopping distances begin to narrow quickly, it will alert the driver with visual and audio warnings.
Jim Kennedy, VP of maintenance for the Tallahassee, Fla.-based McKenzie Tank Lines, has been using the Bendix Wingman Fusion system on his fleet’s Volvo tractors for about five years. “We have a corporate culture of being an early adopter of safety technology,” he said. From 2003 to 2009, McKenzie trucks rear-ended other vehicles 58 times. From 2013 through this year, McKenzie trucks rear-ended other vehicles just four times total. Kennedy attributes the success to the collision mitigation system. Likewise, McKenzie has experienced just one rollover incident since 2011. Between 2003 and 2008, the fleet dealt with 13 rollovers. McKenzie operates about 275 power units, more than half of which are Volvo tractors, Kennedy says. The fleet hauls mostly petroleum products and other hazmat loads.If the driver does not take braking or steering action to avoid the crash, the truck will autonomously engage the brakes in an attempt to prevent the crash or reduce the severity.
VADA’s new camera and radar also allow for more accurate lane departure warnings and a bolstered active cruise control system that maintains proper following distances at highway speeds.
The system also includes the full electronic stability control system, designed to prevent rollover crashes and loss of control by disengaging the throttle and braking to avoid such crashes.
Trigger events, such as hard braking, excessive speed, swerving and lane changes without a signal, record 20-second video clips before and after the event by VADA’s new camera. Those events are then uploaded to a dashboard where fleet managers can download them. Fleets can also use the Bendix SafetyDirect portal to score drivers and target them for intervention based on a long list of events.
The system is available on both VNL and VNM models.
Business update
Volvo Trucks NA’s VP of Marketing, Magnus Koeck, said Volvo predicts 2016 truck orders to drop to 240,000, a big cut from last year’s 300,000. Sluggish manufacturing and freight movement depressed orders this year, he says, and could further suppress order activity next year. Volvo forecasts net orders to dip again in 2017 to 215,000 orders, Koeck says.
Volvo also expects the long haul share of orders to decline to about 43 percent next year, down from this year’s expected 48 percent and last year’s 50 percent. Regional haul orders are eating into the long haul market and should grow to about 35 percent next year, up from this year’s roughly 28 percent, Koeck says.
