From January 23 to 25, 2019, the 57th German Traffic Court Conference was held. Ralf Johanning has prepared some topics for us. Second topic: accident prevention.
The experts of the German Traffic Court Conference rightfully demand that more assistance systems should become mandatory. Especially emergency brake assistants, dead-angle assistants but also Alcolock systems could avoid many accidents.
The fact that driver assistance systems can prevent accidents is largely indisputable in the commercial vehicle industry. The vehicle industry has been offering such systems for many years. Many hauliers have also made it their mission to purchase new vehicles only with the latest systems. A thoroughly commendable approach. But there are still many trucks on the road without any driver assistance systems.
In order to further reduce the number of accidents, according to the experts of the German Traffic Court Conference, further binding measures are required. Therefore, the Federal Government is called upon to work at European level to ensure that emergency brake assistants for trucks and buses comply with the latest state of the art. In addition, it is important to continue informing drivers and companies about the use of the assistance systems, so that these are no longer being shut down.
Cyclists or pedestrians never again overlooked
Furthermore, the Blind Spot Assistent is to become mandatory for all new trucks and buses. Here, too, the federal government would have to work towards this at European level. Because in order for these measures to be enforced, action must be taken at European level. For example, Thomas Fuhrmann-Becker of the Federal Ministry of Transport pointed out that the change of mandatory requirements for the vehicles must be in accordance with the EU type-approval law. National regulations are usually insufficient.
Alcolock systems for professional drivers?
Another hot topic is the use of so-called Alcolock systems. However, the mandatory use of such equipment was only discussed at the Traffic Court Conference if a driver had already been convicted for drunkenness or a registered alcohol-related road traffic hazard. Comprehensive preventive truck traffic control by the police Hessen at the end of January made it clear that some truck drivers were still under alcohol on Sunday evening before departure. Thus, 79 drivers of the 1200 controlled drivers were temporarily forbidden to continue their journey. They first had to sober up before driving again. At the same time, this result raises the question of whether an Alcolock system should generally be installed in trucks and buses, so that an alcoholic professional driver can not even start the engine.
