Learner drivers need longer

More mature guidance for longer is the preferred path of Professor Ulrich Mellinghoff, the vice-president of safety engineering at Mercedes-Benz. He says a 16-year-old or 17-year old learner driver in Germany must be accompanied by someone at least 30 years old for one year.

“We have seen in Germany that this has reduced accident rates by 20 per cent,” he says. "This is a good solution, it gives young people time to learn what is important in real-world traffic.”

Apart from delaying full licenses for beginners, Mellinghoff predicts that future crash avoidance systems will focus on pedestrian safety. Among his crystal ball gazing is 360-degree guidance systems cameras to help drivers monitor conditions, car-to-car communications to report road dangers and better pedestrian-avoidance systems. Mellinghoff says Benz is working on a pedestrian system that not only avoids a pedestrian - like the latest Volvo system that automatically brakes to prevent hitting people - but will steer the car around them.

“We are now working on several different options with prototypes,” he says. Another option is to link any pedestrian avoidance system to the car’s high-beam headlights so they can specifically flash at the pedestrian to warn them. “The first step was night view and the next step to highlight the pedestrian. We can do that relatively cheaply with conventional high beam systems.”

Mellinghoff credits brake-assist systems in today’s German cars with reducing pedestrian accident rates by between 15 to 20 per cent. Car-to-car communication is also getting closer all the time. “I am confident it will be available in two years. It will check between cars on the road conditions, accidents or other problems.” But Mellinghoff says the use of real-time technology to make cars stick to posted speed limits is unlikely. “You can do it but our customers don’t want it. There are situations too when you may need to accelerate to avoid an accident.”

Mellinghoff has clear views on speeding. “I don’t think that speed alone is the problem, it’s the wrong speed in the wrong situation,” he says. In the former West Germany there were 22,000 people killed in car crashes in 1972, but the number has dropped dramatically. "Last year 4100 people were killed and this was with 20 million more people in Germany because of the addition of East Germany, as well as so much more traffic on the roads. And we still have unrestricted speed limits."